đđąđŽ đđĄđŠđ±đŠđŹđ« ⊠Confirmation Bias
Ivanna Baranovawhat elseÂ
is there to do
but witness
this worldâs
precarious
devotion?
In her stunning debut poetry collection, Ivanna Baranova excavates notions of evidence, existence, and resiliency in an attempt to transcend the beliefs that demand our psychic reproduction. Desire, affect, anger, and healing collide in Baranovaâs metaphysical observations of her lived experiences. Whether through the lens of philosophy or astrology, algorithms or nausea under capitalist hegemony, CONFIRMATION BIAS considers the obstacles of being, relating, and rebuilding in the face of sociocultural fragmentation and imminent global collapse. The resulting poems are bright with insight, crackling with humour and idiom, and burning with unforgettable intellect, authenticity, and compassion.
Praise
âElectrifying, dynamic, buzzing, rollicking, immediate. A poetry that animates the body and swerves through time and space to meditate on the spiritual, the social, the erotic-grotesque, Ivanna Baranovaâs CONFIRMATION BIAS offers a compelling reason to think that art might be able to help us survive the doom-pit of capital and environmental collapse. This is a love poem to the sensory overload of the city, the state and nature. CONFIRMATION BIAS is a poetry for the damaged condition of the âelectric throng of people animalsâ who feel too much or feel, who cannot look away from the damage that consumes us all.â
–Â Daniel Borzutzky, author of The Performance of Becoming Human (Winner of the 2016 National Book Award for Poetry)
âIvanna Baranovaâs stunning new book, CONFIRMATION BIAS, unreels sharp, unruly ribbons of language, relaying poetic signals from a Spicerian âOutsideâ with Piscean candor and intensity. This is a gorgeous, challenging, transformative and necessary work of writing. I love this book!â
– Elaine Kahn, author of Women in Public
âHere is poetry as intervention. Intervention in every meaning of the word. Feast upon these enjambments that confirm every bias you thought you had outsmarted. Baranova got there first.â
–Â Marwa Helal, author of Invasive species
âBaranova’s poems feel entirely of this moment: kind, intimately political, narrated by a mind that knows astrology. This collection is shimmery, bare and strong like an iridescent fish still in water. It made me feel better about being alive.â
–Â Charlotte Shane, author of Prostitute Laundry
Press
Poets & Writers – Poetic Lenses: Our Fifteenth Annual Look at Debut Poetry | Marwa Helal
Indie Book Review Podcast – Conscious on Another Level
Poetry Foundation –Â Love Without Emergency
rob mcclennan –Â “[Ivanna Baranova]Â writes as witness, critic and relentless seeker, exploring power structures, capitalism and environmental collapse, moving seamlessly from abstract to the specific, and attempting as much the appropriate questions as she is the possibility of answers.”
Soliloquies Anthology – “Ivanna Baranovaâs CONFIRMATION BIAS explores the role of memory, rituals, technology, and emotions while meditating on moments when we get tired of ourselves, we forget ourselves, and we remember ourselves.”
The /tÆmz/ Review – “CONFIRMATION BIAS is an example of poetry that reaches beyond the formâs supposedly limited readership, breaking rules as it says what it means.”
Interviews
Los Angeles Review of Books – Precarious Devotion: A Conversation with Ivanna Baranova
“[Baranova’s] poetry drifts through our current age of precarity by exploring longing, existential ennui, joy, and connection with all lenses on hand â astrology, psychology, mysticism, drugs, academic frameworks. But more importantly she writes from an indefatigable source of light, dark, and fire.”
Newest York – Jeesee Lee in Conversation with Ivanna Baranova
“The subjective moments in CONFIRMATION BIAS help mirror the ways we all aim to transcend our psychic ruts and metaphysical limitations.”