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Space, in Chains
Laura Kasischke's poems have the same haunting qualities and truth as our most potent memories and dreams. Through ghostly voices, fragmented narratives, overheard conversations, songs, and prayers in language reminiscent of medieval lyrics converted into contemporary idiom, the poems in Space, In Chains create a visceral strangeness true to its own music.
So we found ourselves in an ancient place, the very
air around us bound by chains. There was
stagnant water in which lightning
was reflected, like desperation
in a dying eye. Like science. Like
a dull rock plummeting through space, tossing
off flowers and veils, like a bride. And
also the subway.
Speed under ground.
And the way each body in the room appeared to be
a jar of wasps and flies that day—but, enchanted,
like frightened children's laughter.
So we found ourselves in an ancient place, the very
air around us bound by chains. There was
stagnant water in which lightning
was reflected, like desperation
in a dying eye. Like science. Like
a dull rock plummeting through space, tossing
off flowers and veils, like a bride. And
also the subway.
Speed under ground.
And the way each body in the room appeared to be
a jar of wasps and flies that day—but, enchanted,
like frightened children's laughter.
110 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2011
23 people are currently reading
950 people want to read
About the author
Laura Kasischke
45 books408 followersLaura Kasischke is an American fiction writer and American poet with poetry awards and multiple well reviewed works of fiction. Her work has received the Juniper Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Prize, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers, and the Beatrice Hawley Award. She is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as several Pushcart Prizes.
Her novel The Life Before Her Eyes is the basis for the film of the same name, directed by Vadim Perelman, and starring Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood. Kasischke's work is particularly well-received in France, where she is widely read in translation. Her novel A moi pour toujours (Be Mine) was published by Christian Bourgois, and was a national best seller.
Kasischke attended the University of Michigan and Columbia University. She is also currently a Professor of English Language and of the Residential College at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She lives in Chelsea, Michigan, with her husband and son.
Her novel The Life Before Her Eyes is the basis for the film of the same name, directed by Vadim Perelman, and starring Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood. Kasischke's work is particularly well-received in France, where she is widely read in translation. Her novel A moi pour toujours (Be Mine) was published by Christian Bourgois, and was a national best seller.
Kasischke attended the University of Michigan and Columbia University. She is also currently a Professor of English Language and of the Residential College at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She lives in Chelsea, Michigan, with her husband and son.
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April 4, 2025
‘Get me a set of simple tools out of which to fashion a song for these.’
When Laura Kasischke bluntly observes ‘the sun shining dumbly all over this world and its troubles,’ I felt that. Sometimes life just is that way and we gaze numb and tattered at the radiance of life and hope it can pierce the cloudy skies in our hearts. There is a grimness to Space, In Chains from Kasischke, yet there is also an embrace of such grimness in these poetic examinations on the spectrum of emotions across life, burying us in interiority to hear the music of the heart as we are all on our journey to eventually depart for burial. Still, Kasischke strings an elaborate mosaic of ideas that feel like the calm of a hazy afternoon while also showing us how we are all stitched together in an eternal chain of lives across time. The fairly cerebral prose occasionally veers from the heart to the head and feels more like a math problem to decode (not that numbers and math aren’t a poetry of their own), making it register as a bit cold compared to her other collections, yet there is still such an ethereal beauty pouring forth from every page. Space, In Change plunges into the sorrows of life yet ultimately serves as a lovely testament to the transformative power of language.
Your last day
So we found ourselves in an ancient place, the very
air around us bound by chains. There was
stagnant water in which lightning
was reflected, like desperation
in a dying eye. Like science. Like
a dull rock plummeting through space, tossing
off flowers and veils, like a bride. And
also the subway.
Speed under ground.
And the way each body in the room appeared to be
a jar of wasps and flies that day – but, enchanted,
like frightened children’s laughter.
Kasischke offers a feast of metaphors in this collection where death seems a constant companion. While these poems are rather thoughtful musings on the darker side of life, there is a sort of cold indifference as if we are observing humanity, as the title implies, from a vantage point of space. Yet this also allows the poems to move rather fluidly into difficult subjects and emotions with grace, finding us all chained to mortality and each other in this cosmic dance of existence. There is plenty of loss and grief and these poems effectively maneuver themselves unstitched from time to examine past, present, and future all as if in one breath and we frequently observe a recurring subject from many angles and possibilities as if the reader can ‘choose their own adventure’ through the multitudenous choices and consequences in life. But we also see how time slowly bleeds life dry, such as in O Elegant Giant dealing with the speaker’s father struggling with Alzheimer’s and fading:
‘My father asleep in a
chair in a warm corridor. While his boat, the Unsinkable, sits at the bottom
of the ocean. While his boat, the Unsinkable, waits marooned on the shore.
While his boat, the Unsinkable, sails on, sails on.’
And so we, too, must always sail on no matter what life tosses our way. Though not all is doom and gloom and poems such as The Drinking Couple, Similes has a real playfulness as a litany of similes for the inhibitions of alcohol, opting to come at it from multiple angles in a way that reflects the collection as a whole:
‘until the next drink
like a princess waking up
beside a chimpanzee—
or that chimpanzee
in a tuxedo, strapped
to a rocket, launched
in a living room, like
not the strong man’s arm, just
the sleeve, as if
not only the birds but the cages
had been set free, the way we
were enjoying one another
enjoying one another’s
company’
The poems here posit that each other are all we truly have in this life to love and to hold, to remember and to be remembered by, and this is what matters. It is through the passing of stories, from one life to the next, that we find our way into eternity. Parents raise us, instilling us with their lessons and stories, these parents ‘who taught me to love by loving me. Who, by dying, taught me to die,’ pass us a torch we will hand off to the next generation and the human chain of love, life, and legacy continues.
‘That a star in heaven
might have poisonous feathers.
That an angel might cast it for
us into the sea.
…
That it might have been foolish to fall in love with this world.’
A rather lovely collection even if a bit colder than her usual work, Laura Kasischke digs into the darkness and brings up gems on every page. This collection, her eighth, displays a great talent for creativity and a wonderful focus that effects a rather innovative narrative approach to poetry and it is no wonder she is also an accomplished writer. Heartfelt even if it seems aimed more towards the head, Space, In Chains is a lovely read.
4.5/5
Heart/Mind
A bear batting at a beehive, how
clumsy the mind
always was with the heart. Wanting
what it wanted.
The blizzard’s
accountant, how
timidly the heart approached the business
of the mind. Counting
what it counted.
Light inside a cage, the way the heart-
Bird trapped in an airport, the way the mind-
How it flashed on the floor of the phone booth, my
last dime. And
this letter
I didn’t send
how surprising
to find it now.
All this love I must have felt.
When Laura Kasischke bluntly observes ‘the sun shining dumbly all over this world and its troubles,’ I felt that. Sometimes life just is that way and we gaze numb and tattered at the radiance of life and hope it can pierce the cloudy skies in our hearts. There is a grimness to Space, In Chains from Kasischke, yet there is also an embrace of such grimness in these poetic examinations on the spectrum of emotions across life, burying us in interiority to hear the music of the heart as we are all on our journey to eventually depart for burial. Still, Kasischke strings an elaborate mosaic of ideas that feel like the calm of a hazy afternoon while also showing us how we are all stitched together in an eternal chain of lives across time. The fairly cerebral prose occasionally veers from the heart to the head and feels more like a math problem to decode (not that numbers and math aren’t a poetry of their own), making it register as a bit cold compared to her other collections, yet there is still such an ethereal beauty pouring forth from every page. Space, In Change plunges into the sorrows of life yet ultimately serves as a lovely testament to the transformative power of language.
Your last day
So we found ourselves in an ancient place, the very
air around us bound by chains. There was
stagnant water in which lightning
was reflected, like desperation
in a dying eye. Like science. Like
a dull rock plummeting through space, tossing
off flowers and veils, like a bride. And
also the subway.
Speed under ground.
And the way each body in the room appeared to be
a jar of wasps and flies that day – but, enchanted,
like frightened children’s laughter.
Kasischke offers a feast of metaphors in this collection where death seems a constant companion. While these poems are rather thoughtful musings on the darker side of life, there is a sort of cold indifference as if we are observing humanity, as the title implies, from a vantage point of space. Yet this also allows the poems to move rather fluidly into difficult subjects and emotions with grace, finding us all chained to mortality and each other in this cosmic dance of existence. There is plenty of loss and grief and these poems effectively maneuver themselves unstitched from time to examine past, present, and future all as if in one breath and we frequently observe a recurring subject from many angles and possibilities as if the reader can ‘choose their own adventure’ through the multitudenous choices and consequences in life. But we also see how time slowly bleeds life dry, such as in O Elegant Giant dealing with the speaker’s father struggling with Alzheimer’s and fading:
‘My father asleep in a
chair in a warm corridor. While his boat, the Unsinkable, sits at the bottom
of the ocean. While his boat, the Unsinkable, waits marooned on the shore.
While his boat, the Unsinkable, sails on, sails on.’
And so we, too, must always sail on no matter what life tosses our way. Though not all is doom and gloom and poems such as The Drinking Couple, Similes has a real playfulness as a litany of similes for the inhibitions of alcohol, opting to come at it from multiple angles in a way that reflects the collection as a whole:
‘until the next drink
like a princess waking up
beside a chimpanzee—
or that chimpanzee
in a tuxedo, strapped
to a rocket, launched
in a living room, like
not the strong man’s arm, just
the sleeve, as if
not only the birds but the cages
had been set free, the way we
were enjoying one another
enjoying one another’s
company’
The poems here posit that each other are all we truly have in this life to love and to hold, to remember and to be remembered by, and this is what matters. It is through the passing of stories, from one life to the next, that we find our way into eternity. Parents raise us, instilling us with their lessons and stories, these parents ‘who taught me to love by loving me. Who, by dying, taught me to die,’ pass us a torch we will hand off to the next generation and the human chain of love, life, and legacy continues.
‘That a star in heaven
might have poisonous feathers.
That an angel might cast it for
us into the sea.
…
That it might have been foolish to fall in love with this world.’
A rather lovely collection even if a bit colder than her usual work, Laura Kasischke digs into the darkness and brings up gems on every page. This collection, her eighth, displays a great talent for creativity and a wonderful focus that effects a rather innovative narrative approach to poetry and it is no wonder she is also an accomplished writer. Heartfelt even if it seems aimed more towards the head, Space, In Chains is a lovely read.
4.5/5
Heart/Mind
A bear batting at a beehive, how
clumsy the mind
always was with the heart. Wanting
what it wanted.
The blizzard’s
accountant, how
timidly the heart approached the business
of the mind. Counting
what it counted.
Light inside a cage, the way the heart-
Bird trapped in an airport, the way the mind-
How it flashed on the floor of the phone booth, my
last dime. And
this letter
I didn’t send
how surprising
to find it now.
All this love I must have felt.
January 30, 2015
Perfect title: Space, in Chains. Perfect cover art: Mark Rothko, Number 8. I loved reading these dreamy incantations, they were like a new second language I could completely relate to. I'll be looking for more books by Laura Kasischke.
May 14, 2011
I really like Kasischke, and think she's a poet that's always worth reading, and this new book of hers is no exception. I say this even though the book makes me uncomfortable, and not necessarily in one of those good ways-- the occasion of many of the poems seems to be the death of her parents, and in the end, there are more poems on the death of her father than there are about her mother-- it makes me feel the same way when I teach Anne Bradstreet and the question asks why her mom gets this dinky elegy and the dad gets this huge enconium. But when I'm teaching I can just walk away from the question-- here, I can't possibly solve it to my emotional satisfaction, and I'm left saying things like "the poems about her dad turned out to be better poems than those about her mom," and to ask no more questions.
Despite the relatively limited subject matter of this book (on one level, at least), there are a whole bunch of kinds of poems here-- I don't remember reading Kasischke's prose poems before this collection, but they are very good, dense little nuggets that remain distinctively poetic, not at all like the narrative prose she employs in her novels. There are lineated poems, of course, of differing lengths and forms, and for me at least, the poems here remain fresh not only in terms of their shapes but in their language and imagery. She does all kinds of things here-- though if there's one thing she doesn't do it sore-- the sentences are truncated, the lines pruned back.
There are a number of smaller sequences here, almost stories told in installments-- the "O Elegant Giant" poems are one of them, and may include most of the prose poems. I remember thinking that there were others as well, when I'd come across a poem and go, o, that's the bird from the other poem. The sequences are not together, in other words, but broken up across the collection. It's a dense book, and it'll take me some time to fully get a handle on it-- at a first read, in fact, patches of it felt too personal to really understand. But I get the sense, too, that this difficulty is not some trick, but rather will come to seem like an inducement to come back and read these poems, and this collection, again. For now, it's very impressive, and hard to know what more I will think of it in six months time.
Despite the relatively limited subject matter of this book (on one level, at least), there are a whole bunch of kinds of poems here-- I don't remember reading Kasischke's prose poems before this collection, but they are very good, dense little nuggets that remain distinctively poetic, not at all like the narrative prose she employs in her novels. There are lineated poems, of course, of differing lengths and forms, and for me at least, the poems here remain fresh not only in terms of their shapes but in their language and imagery. She does all kinds of things here-- though if there's one thing she doesn't do it sore-- the sentences are truncated, the lines pruned back.
There are a number of smaller sequences here, almost stories told in installments-- the "O Elegant Giant" poems are one of them, and may include most of the prose poems. I remember thinking that there were others as well, when I'd come across a poem and go, o, that's the bird from the other poem. The sequences are not together, in other words, but broken up across the collection. It's a dense book, and it'll take me some time to fully get a handle on it-- at a first read, in fact, patches of it felt too personal to really understand. But I get the sense, too, that this difficulty is not some trick, but rather will come to seem like an inducement to come back and read these poems, and this collection, again. For now, it's very impressive, and hard to know what more I will think of it in six months time.
March 18, 2019
I love poetry because it's mysterious. Laura Kasischke's Space, in Chains made me realize that. Does this apply to all poetry? Probably not. Does it apply to a lot of the poetry I love? Definitely yes! I also love sad poetry, and this collection fits the bill for that requirement as well. This is a beautifully ambiguous book concerned with the cosmic, fate, and time.
In these poems, Kasischke explores the overarching patterns of lives and also the minutiae of lifetimes. She offers an omniscient view of people while also using an "I" pronoun. She sometimes slips perspectives mid-poem from 1st to 3rd person. The transitions are flawless and help lend an eerie mood to the writing.
These poems are also concerned with mortality. Death casts a shadow throughout the work. There is the recurring idea of being frozen in time, of a moment continuing on forever somewhere even as life goes on. Time is nonlinear in Space, in Chains, and the reader gets to see into the future and the past from a singular vantage point.
At the beginning of the book, there's an epigraph in the form of a riddle. Then there are five different poems in the collection entitled "Riddle." Throughout, there is the presence of the speaker's father and her fraught relationship with him. The poem "Dread" really encapsulates that feeling viscerally. And Kasischke has the best metaphors and similes, as evinced by the virtuosic "The Drinking Couple, Similes." It's cool how sometimes the titles of the poems act as the first lines and the next line picks up from there.
Kasischke has such a unique way of describing things. She has a great ability to describe seemingly disparate things and to combine them into a cohesive idea. What links them is her language and the wonderful thread of her thoughts. Space, in Chains is luminous with arresting imagery—I could really imagine it all in my head.
There are great cadences and rhythms to the language. The poems have breaks in the perfect places. I kept going back to reread lines, stanzas, and whole poems. I really enjoyed this rereading in order to understand, savor, and turn the words over in my mind. I loved feeling something click when I uncovered something new about a poem or finally realized what the title meant and why it was called that. These poems reward revisiting.
Laura Kasischke is a genius. Space, in Chains is a feast of beautiful writing. It's surreal, moving, and one of a kind. If you love poetry, do yourself a favor and read this. If not, this might convert you to being a poetry lover.
In these poems, Kasischke explores the overarching patterns of lives and also the minutiae of lifetimes. She offers an omniscient view of people while also using an "I" pronoun. She sometimes slips perspectives mid-poem from 1st to 3rd person. The transitions are flawless and help lend an eerie mood to the writing.
These poems are also concerned with mortality. Death casts a shadow throughout the work. There is the recurring idea of being frozen in time, of a moment continuing on forever somewhere even as life goes on. Time is nonlinear in Space, in Chains, and the reader gets to see into the future and the past from a singular vantage point.
At the beginning of the book, there's an epigraph in the form of a riddle. Then there are five different poems in the collection entitled "Riddle." Throughout, there is the presence of the speaker's father and her fraught relationship with him. The poem "Dread" really encapsulates that feeling viscerally. And Kasischke has the best metaphors and similes, as evinced by the virtuosic "The Drinking Couple, Similes." It's cool how sometimes the titles of the poems act as the first lines and the next line picks up from there.
Kasischke has such a unique way of describing things. She has a great ability to describe seemingly disparate things and to combine them into a cohesive idea. What links them is her language and the wonderful thread of her thoughts. Space, in Chains is luminous with arresting imagery—I could really imagine it all in my head.
There are great cadences and rhythms to the language. The poems have breaks in the perfect places. I kept going back to reread lines, stanzas, and whole poems. I really enjoyed this rereading in order to understand, savor, and turn the words over in my mind. I loved feeling something click when I uncovered something new about a poem or finally realized what the title meant and why it was called that. These poems reward revisiting.
Laura Kasischke is a genius. Space, in Chains is a feast of beautiful writing. It's surreal, moving, and one of a kind. If you love poetry, do yourself a favor and read this. If not, this might convert you to being a poetry lover.
March 18, 2012
I want to be on the mailing list for her poems as fast as they hit the page. She inhabits a quirky imagination that is fully aware of being: a mom, of the girl she was, of being a mortal with mortal relations, of the far flung connections that thinking provokes. Whether commenting on a past lover or scanning cans in a supermarket, watching it work is breathtaking. Winner of this year's National Book Critic's Circle award for poetry, "Space, in Chains," is the latest in a list of other knockouts: Dance and Disappear, Gardening in the Dark, among others.
November 30, 2021
There are some really brilliant lines here, things to keep and quote. I love her sharp observations.
April 9, 2012
This book had a lot of buzz about it and earned several awards in 2011. And it was, indeed, very good. However, I thought the overall volume was somewhat inconsistent. Thematically and tonally, there was a certain monotony that led me to think the book would have been somewhat improved if it had been several poems shorter.
On the other hand, when you run across Kasichke's good poems, you can't help but be impressed. Subtle pacing and haunting imagery result in a unsettling and unique vision of contemporary suburban life. Although it didn't live up to the hype for me, there were enough gems in the volume that I would recommend it to other contemporary poetry readers.
On the other hand, when you run across Kasichke's good poems, you can't help but be impressed. Subtle pacing and haunting imagery result in a unsettling and unique vision of contemporary suburban life. Although it didn't live up to the hype for me, there were enough gems in the volume that I would recommend it to other contemporary poetry readers.
January 31, 2018
I think this book falls into the category of not every book is for everybody. There is plenty of creative uses of speech and frequent use of metaphors. And there were some poems that I enjoyed. But for the most part all of the pretty language didn't not translate into any sort of meaning that I could wrap my brain around. And maybe that was the point. Maybe it is up there with dance for the sake of dance and not for the story itself. If that is the case, well done. I think I may have to research this poet further and come back to this book. This may give me a new perspective. But, for now, this is not for me.
March 10, 2012
I don't feel well-versed enough in modern poetry to be able to say anything about how "Space, In Chains" compares to anything else, or if it merits all of the awards and distinctions that it's earned (from NYT, National Book Critics, etc), but I can say that for me it accomplished what I think all poetry ought to aim to do - leave me in wonder of how such big ideas and strong emotions can be conveyed with such an economy of words.
October 3, 2017
Your last day
So we found ourselves in an ancient place, the very
air around us bound by chains. There was
stagnant water in which lightning
was reflected, like desperation
in a dying eye. Like science. Like
a dull rock plummeting through space, tossing
off flowers and veils, like a bride. And
also the subway.
Speed under ground.
And the way each body in the room appeared to be
a jar of wasps and flies that day—but, enchanted,
like frightened children’s laughter.
So we found ourselves in an ancient place, the very
air around us bound by chains. There was
stagnant water in which lightning
was reflected, like desperation
in a dying eye. Like science. Like
a dull rock plummeting through space, tossing
off flowers and veils, like a bride. And
also the subway.
Speed under ground.
And the way each body in the room appeared to be
a jar of wasps and flies that day—but, enchanted,
like frightened children’s laughter.
July 27, 2011
This is a really amazing collection, beautiful and moving and also often quite funny. Kasischke has a brilliant eye for images and a wonderfully subtle way of rendering even the most difficult moments (of which there are many, given the subject matter). The book is rich and smart and rewarding in every way.
March 25, 2012
Did one of my favorite activities: arose early Sunday (at 7 am) sipped puer, white and green loose teas while reading Space, in Chains from cover to cover. I enjoyed the collection very much some great imagery and oddly juxtaposed ideas, images, etc. Then I ran 4 miles. A great morning, yes it was all alone time.
September 29, 2013
A sizzling, simpering, scampering, dazzling, mournsome, toothsome, tantalizing text of paged poems! As seraphically cold as Rilkean angels, as searing as a really really hot fork, as brave as Keats marching to Italy as a soldier marches to a battery, Kasischke bravely asks questions she bravely doesn't answer. Another masterful collection of fiercesome poems!
September 23, 2011
Definitely my favorite Kasischke collection so far. I'd argue that she overuses italics, but, overall, it does everything poetry should: make you think, make you feel, make you sit up a little straighter in your chair.
August 22, 2018
You must be in the frame of mind where you can allow words to warp into a new shape in the mirror to finish this book. Each time I picked it back up it took me a whole poem to really read the next poem. It's not so much of a time warp as a sliver just above this dimension, or just beside it, where the same things are there but maybe named differently - maybe shaded by the one who holds their memory the tightest - maybe Laura's associations became the new instinctual chord progressions for perfect pop songs there. They're so clean too, even when they're viscous. Something about them makes me feel like looking at an old photograph that has no kitsch, no nostalgia either though - there is a dignity there but it isn't mine, and sometimes it isn't hers either. Cleaner than what I can say about them, tinted by my stabs at them. But it looks as though they've drawn a sword of their own and are bowing before the second round?
May 26, 2018
Consonance, repetition, and juxtapositions of object and meaning are used in these free form poems to evoke a sense of remembrance and expectation. Connotations between meanings and objects, and a sense that the reader should expect the unexpected, add to the word play and sense of evocation of images of loss and aging. A feeling of standing alone in an empty house and not knowing if you're coming or going, an entrance or a departure, the expectancy of death in nature and the juxtaposition of something precious in a bleak landscape, or the moment of revealing something shameful, come to mind. Consonance is seen in lines like, "...were also clattering/crazily/over cobblestones".
March 18, 2020
"Even the paper cup in my hand has learned to breathe. And each note is a beautiful, ancient kingdom precariously balanced at the edge of a cliff above the sea."
:A panoply! The
Discovery of good luck. The invention of anxiety.
But even I who bring you the news cannot begin to believe it. The lost details of their lives are also lost to me:"
What a surprising book, full of unique constructions and vastly interesting images. I think this book is a bit disjointed at times, but the disjointed rarely.. derails the work? Mostly disorients in a way that adds to the readings of the poems. I find Kasischke's voice here to be particularly vibrant, though, and love the dance that it purveys.
:A panoply! The
Discovery of good luck. The invention of anxiety.
But even I who bring you the news cannot begin to believe it. The lost details of their lives are also lost to me:"
What a surprising book, full of unique constructions and vastly interesting images. I think this book is a bit disjointed at times, but the disjointed rarely.. derails the work? Mostly disorients in a way that adds to the readings of the poems. I find Kasischke's voice here to be particularly vibrant, though, and love the dance that it purveys.
July 19, 2023
I'm reading a poetry book and it feels like a horror depressing novel.
Every single page is about the death of infants, animals and humans, or pure violence:
"I have stood here before.
Just this morning
I reached into the dark if the dishwasher
and stabbed my hand with a kitchen knife."
- extract from "View from the glass"
"Look! I bear into this room a platter piled high with the rage my mother felt toward my father! Yes, it's diamonds now.
- extract from "Look"
"Riddle" is the only poem that I enjoyed.
Every single page is about the death of infants, animals and humans, or pure violence:
"I have stood here before.
Just this morning
I reached into the dark if the dishwasher
and stabbed my hand with a kitchen knife."
- extract from "View from the glass"
"Look! I bear into this room a platter piled high with the rage my mother felt toward my father! Yes, it's diamonds now.
- extract from "Look"
"Riddle" is the only poem that I enjoyed.
June 27, 2017
Good to read aloud, each poem in its turn, and when you get to the end, to start again at the beginning. Go slowly and listen to what she tells us. Author tries to puzzle out life’s riddles, returning, for example, to the subject of the loss of a beloved mother or father and how did that happen, how careless we must be. “She searches for the music, but she can’t find it. Oh, God, it was here only the other day.”
January 12, 2018
My first book of poetry, read at my wife's recommendation. It's really good. The poet's are lyrical, touch on family loss and many other things and always end with a quick stab of words that stay with you. I really enjoyed it.
August 3, 2018
Moves nimbly and knowingly through time, place, person: ancestors, offspring, self; past, present, future; young, old. From the novel discoveries of youth to the age in life where the catchword is, "Please don't remember me this way."
February 20, 2019
I own this book and have read and reread it many times. Laura Kasischke's poetry pulls together disparate ideas in an unexpected way--each read through feels fresh, discovering the poem for the first time.
January 31, 2023
2 stars; I can understand why people love her writing, but I think it just wasn’t for me! I couldn’t comprehend the excessive use of metaphors, although beautiful, I found very little meaning. Maybe I’m just dumb, but I think I would’ve loved this collection if some were toned down a little.
August 3, 2023
#thesealeychallenge
The Sealey Challenge 2023
Day 2
Poems that want to be wanted. Poems with lines like
"A white sack filled with black feathers.
A hole at the bottom of that sack.
Those black feathers drifitng into an abyss of similar feathers
Never, never to come back."
The Sealey Challenge 2023
Day 2
Poems that want to be wanted. Poems with lines like
"A white sack filled with black feathers.
A hole at the bottom of that sack.
Those black feathers drifitng into an abyss of similar feathers
Never, never to come back."
May 4, 2017
Incantatory. Gripping.
June 20, 2017
Air // and terror, which become teeth together.
September 29, 2017
These poems were sometimes too elusive for me to entirely grasp, which made me question my shortcomings, as all good poetry should make you do (among other things). The words enchanted me.
“My memory of your casual smile
This memory, like
a child’s bit of sweet embroidery smuggled
out of an asylum”
“My memory of your casual smile
This memory, like
a child’s bit of sweet embroidery smuggled
out of an asylum”
December 21, 2017
Brialliant, touching poetry.
June 6, 2019
Reluctant four stars. I appreciate the artistic merit of these poems, but none of them moved me in any way. I don't need things handed to me on a platter, but give me SOMETHING to grab onto.
February 9, 2022
Kasischke combines unexpected images and creates associations unlike any other poet I’ve read. Her poems are abstract yet readable. I look forward to rereading this book in the future!
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