It wasn’t clearhow long the musesdressed as lunch ladieskept the place openThe room got darkthough the sun was still outI went home to think about itI said to the seathere is a full moon sensationand it nodded backits beard pulling a wavethrough the air with one handI’d intended to be opento whatever life wasto offer lovewhere I found its plotYou had to check the dateMilk went bad even in heavenThis wasn’t itI brushed my teethfor entertainment
The Art of the Novel
Amanda Nadelberg
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“The Art of the Novel” from SHAKE UNTIL CLOUDY: by Amanda Nadelberg.
Published by The Song Cave on April 21, 2026
Copyright © 2026 by Amanda Nadelberg.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
First published in On the Seawall on April 9, 2026.
Amanda Nadelberg is the author of four books, most recently Shake Until Cloudy. She’s the founder of Culture Forms, serves on the board of Transit Books, and lives in Oakland.
In her fourth collection, Shake Until Cloudy, Amanda Nadelberg approaches the everyday from a slant that reappraises reality and inspires wonder. The book begins with an assembly of Micropoems—conceptual miniatures with a sense of humor—which lead into lyric mediations on love, personhood, and the desire to begin again. Filled with tenderness and temporality, these poems open into metaphysical questions and possibilities—"Faces appeared in fragments / I didn’t remember how to go / going through the world / being who you are.” With Shake Until Cloudy, Nadelberg shows us once more how forms can create the sway of life, rhythmic and emotional, and how our observations reveal the transformative nature of attention.
"Recalibrating Romanticism's glittering abyss with every available phoneme, dream, and waking moment is what Amanda Nadelberg is here to do."
—Lucy Ives
"I am OBSESSED with Shake Until Cloudy! This brilliant book elated, stimulated, and bettered me. There isn't a false step to be found anywhere in these intelligent, elegant, witty, and rueful poems. The Micropoems are aphorisms, koans, jokes, footnotes...wonderful to read and to think about on walks or in daydream moments. Amanda Nadelberg is wise and a colossal talent."
—Alice Elliott Dark
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