Publications
"Vertumnus": Fence
"1936 Prayer": Colorado Review
"Likenesses": Boston Review
"The Palace": Simpsonistas
Excerpt from "King Queen": Neck Press
​
​
_________________
Likenesses was chosen for the 2016 APR/Honickman First Book Prize by guest judge Nick Flynn. In his introduction to the book he writes, "Likenesses is made up of five sequences of poems, many of which use the engine of simile to drive them forward. Running alongside this simile-generating machine, there is something also here of Genesis—the book is, in part, an origin myth, an attempt to create the world by naming it."
​
... published by Copper Canyon Press
​
​
“It’s almost impossible to explain why the playfulness of Heather Tone’s ‘Likenesses’ produces such delight… Freedom, light, leggerezza, speed, and depth. Crystal abyss, ‘nothing,’ a touch of kabbalah. Perfect projections of shades between death and life, a scent of Eden… These lines scream with joy, and yet they are as full of silence as a mysterious film projected on the night sky.” —Tomaž Šalamun
​
Rob Schlegel, The Catenary Press:
"[Gestures consists] of two long sequences, 'Combinations,' and 'Gesture.' Both poems seem to engage the notion that as humans we are in constant revision. I mean that as widely as possible. As mentioned earlier, the poems are also deeply entrenched in repetition. Heather’s use of repetition suggests that by repeating a word so many times, one can diminish the referential value of that word until it begins to resemble something like an art object, a shape on the page. This formulation is provocative in its own right, but it takes on even greater strength when situated within the context of Heather’s uncanny use of metaphor: 'I gestured to the sink, and it said it felt like a meadow./I gestured to a meadow, and it gestured to the forest./I gestured to the tree, and it gestured to a tree that was farther away.'”
​
... more about The Catenary Press from Rob McLennan's blog.
