< case sensitive REVIEWS
"The mystery of case sensitive then is not merely an enjoyably noir thriller, not merely a piecing together of cryptic clues to a puzzle, but also and more so a mystery in the ancient religious sense: a ritual journey toward revelation and recovery of the soul's secrets." Susan Settlemyre Williams Blackbird
"A beautiful dwelling of ideas. case sensitive suggests that there need be no divide between the associative connections of poetry and the extended thinking of the essay. This is a book full of luminous footnotes, details, and attentive readings. It strings together a series of moments to create something resonate, large, and inclusive." Juliana Spahr
"It's the structure and order of these chapbooks that pushes the project toward extended narrative and essayistic thinking. . . Each of the chapbooks changes in tone and strategy, stringing together a 'story' as a collage of forms—part poem, part gossip, and part documentary." Juliet Patterson Drunken Boat
"Greenstreet has written a beautiful book of poetry that is mysterious and compelling, that contains a story but doesn't tell one, that has prophetic moments and lines that in their associative qualities leave the reader feeling off course. This is good. Underlying this book is the idea that poetry needn't organize experience and language into neat packages." Pamela Hart Galatea Resurrects
"A poem intrigue of the highest order. Greenstreet has made a brilliant beginning with this first book." Kathleen Fraser
"The aesthetic choices made here revolve very much around multiplicity—of voice, of meaning, of perspective, of narrative. The endless and 'unsolvable' entwining of all the elements can have the effect of too many appliances going at once, while you're on the phone, while the doorbell rings, while you try to hold up your towel because you've just come from the tub—which is still filling with water. But you know what? That's sort of cool. Quite naturally, Greenstreet lets it all pile up. The reader, eventually, finds the strands meant just for her." Olivia Cronk Bookslut
"The poem '[SALT]' mixes the many uses, history, and attributes of salt while processing the grief of a now-gone mother. Throughout the book her fragments, associations and repetitions, seemingly so disparate, lead to new insights and recognition of the moments we all feel when lost." Abigail Zimmer's Top 2016 Reads
"Kate's tropes are devastating realia, mother's good suitcase, sandwiches on the bed, both locks. . . There's constant movement, searching for the hard particular." Jack Kimball Pantaloons
"Did Kate Greenstreet steal these poems from her character and publish them as her own, or did her character steal them from her?" Thomas Basbøll The Pangrammaticon
". . . a poet to watch." Publisher's Weekly
"Greenstreet writes that there is 'a minimum of plot' in the book; this may be true in a strict sense, but case sensitive is also one of the only books of poetry I can think of with a surprise ending." Becca Klaver GutCult
"Part detective, all artist, Greenstreet is out and in the world, and like the poets she refers to (Lorine Niedecker, Fanny Howe), she is surgical in her view, slicing specimens, crafting hybrid images and tossing herself, her perspective into foreign landscapes (or making the familiar foreign)." Sina Queyras Lemon Hound
"Greenstreet continues to write intrepid pieces, ignoring traditional definitions of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Despite being her first book, case sensitive displays a mature disregard for genre." Erica Wright ForeWord Magazine
"Kate Greenstreet's case sensitive unfolds the 'begin asking' that is possibility's scaffolding, poetry's too. Resisting the order of story that 'has to leave out nearly everything,' she enacts, line by line, narrative's capacity for synesthesia. . . In the 'spontaneous luminosity' of her materials—just words—Greenstreet frays a way through, to where all that stands between need and forgiveness is being's quiet insistence, simply this: 'to be.'" Erin Mouré
"And while Greenstreet has a densely conjugated sense of humor, we are, delightfully, left to wonder how much of her prior commitment to irony she surrenders in declaring: 'So much of what we say to one another isn't true—it's just the way it comes out, / so we need to be forgiving.' That she negotiates so fiercely under arc of that forgiveness is evidence not only her essential, gentle humanity but also her intellectual fearlessness, for every idea in this book is pressed against the possibility of collapse and retrieved, at considerable risk to the poet, from the ontological lost-and-found of failure." Scott Wilkerson Word For/Word
"Greenstreet wraps her poems in and around each other. . . as she weaves them into magnificent, living creatures." rob mclennan's blog
"case sensitive uncovers the mystery of the ordinariness of life unfolding. . . just enough narrative to ground the reader, just enough strong, lyrical language to make the reader want to know this narrative." Jennifer Bartlett saintelizabethstreet
"For Greenstreet and the narrator in case sensitive, asking questions does not seem to be one possible option; it is mandate, the only way of life. . . There is something instinctive about the person telling the story, something trustworthy. The narrator asks the right questions and leaves out the right details. In Greenstreet I feel like I have found an old friend, a fellow traveler, someone who is at times humorous, at times serious, but always conscious of the world and the task at hand." Gina Myers Galatea Resurrects