RaveThe RumpusAs the inaugural book in a groundbreaking series, The Kissing of Kissing carries a heavy responsibility. It has to represent poets like Emerson and broaden readers’ notions of what poetry can be. It does all of this and also delivers well-crafted, exciting poetry ... In general, the repetition provides structure, both to the individual poems and to the collection as a whole. Words like \'freedom,\' \'light,\' \'kissing,\' and \'hell\' loop around again and again, as they might in a sestina or a ghazal, or in some free verse collections ... Since many of the words in her poems come from this stable of vocabulary, rarer words...spring from the text with fresh urgency. Emerson often writes in response to her own paintings, and this use of language reminded me of paint layered on a canvas, with these rarer words standing out like an orb of color in a Rousseauian jungle ... There are moments where the tone sounds slightly naïve, where words like \'soul\' made me recall poetry workshop dictums, but overall, it’s as though her position, at a certain remove from typical society, allows her to consider more seriously life’s mysteries ... a brilliant new voice like Emerson’s should be celebrated. The Kissing of Kissing is a valuable addition to the world of poetry, both for what it can teach us about neurodiversity and about being human.
