Aaron Anstett's verse resides unapologetically in physicality--in the blood, bone, and muscle of the body. He explores the juxtaposition of nature and industry and the body's relation to these larger forces with language vibrant, haunting, and sometimes violent. Anstett doesn't deal with traditional or cliched notions of beauty. Instead, he reworks the mess of everyday life, isolating and magnifying the sublime.

“Aaron Anstett has a unique talent for dislocating language into meaning, and he accomplishes this most often through the body's exhaustive task of flesh, though ‘beyond its umpteen miseries, / enduring uproar in our skins so keen // it cannot be rendered, what we a capella say / all vowel and glottal stop.’ His raised voice is far-reaching and memorable.” —Mark Irwin, author of Bright Hunger