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Antidote
In Corey Van Landingham’s Antidote, love equates with disease, valediction is a contact sport, the moon is a lunatic, and someone is always watching. Here the uncanny coexists with the personal, so that each poem undergoes making and unmaking, is birthed and bound in an acute strangeness. Elegy is made new by a speaker both heartbreaking and transgressive. Van Landingham reveals the instability of self and perception in states of grief; she is not afraid to tip the world upside down and shake it out, gather the lint and change from its pockets and say, “I can make something with this.” Wild and surreal, driven by loss, Antidote invites both the beautiful and the brutal into its arms, allowing for shocking declarations about that it is like hibernation, a car crash, or a parasite. Time, geography, and landscape are called into question as backdrops for various forms of valediction. It soon becomes clear that there is no antidote one can take for grief or heartbreak; that love can, at times, feel like violence; and that one may never get better at saying goodbye.
- GenresPoetry
72 pages, Paperback
First published October 28, 2013
6 people are currently reading
625 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
April 11, 2025
I’ve read excerpts of Reader, I and was excited to jump into Antidote to see the expanse of CVL’s work. The cover of this collection is absolutely gorgeous. Many of the poem’s leaps did not land for me nor did I find the subjects presented as transformative as I was hoping. I’m hoping in the later collections we see the surreal impulse followed all the way through rather than sacrificed for narrative. Overall, peaceful read.
October 18, 2016
Corey Van Landingham's collection of poems is an absolute marvel. Her choice of words and arrangement are peculiar, smart and haunting. It's like tasting a mouthful of Oregon pine needles and blood and saltwater and something familial and something foreign.
On a related note, I was impressed with Corey's interview with Bucknell University's West Branch magazine, in which she talks about Antidote and her pointed thoughts on poetry, which lends itself to me appreciating both the poetry and the poet (http://www.bucknell.edu/west-branch-w...
"...I don’t think poetry can ever fully connect with the natural world. This, because we are bound inextricably to language. As language is always, in a way, a failure to access the thing-in-itself, poetry takes up the distance between language and experience. It both acknowledges and threatens that void. Its failures, though, present their own unique opportunities. If poetry cannot (and, perhaps, should not) replicate the world, it can offer instead a translation of the world, a way of making meaning askance, dismantling our knowns through other approximations. That, I think, is poetry’s great mystery, poetry’s longing, and poetry’s grief—it is an elegy to the world it can’t fully connect to. This is our burden—language—and our gift."
On a related note, I was impressed with Corey's interview with Bucknell University's West Branch magazine, in which she talks about Antidote and her pointed thoughts on poetry, which lends itself to me appreciating both the poetry and the poet (http://www.bucknell.edu/west-branch-w...
"...I don’t think poetry can ever fully connect with the natural world. This, because we are bound inextricably to language. As language is always, in a way, a failure to access the thing-in-itself, poetry takes up the distance between language and experience. It both acknowledges and threatens that void. Its failures, though, present their own unique opportunities. If poetry cannot (and, perhaps, should not) replicate the world, it can offer instead a translation of the world, a way of making meaning askance, dismantling our knowns through other approximations. That, I think, is poetry’s great mystery, poetry’s longing, and poetry’s grief—it is an elegy to the world it can’t fully connect to. This is our burden—language—and our gift."
June 1, 2021
"Tell me how to make a bid against the probability of being frozen, / the way the sumac berries—I was waiting for you— / stayed so red in their clusters for a whole winter, and how love, too, / is that sleepy place of keeping still, or else / the one week of winter in summer, if we’re to believe / what other people say."
I really enjoyed this and wish I could have experienced Antidote in its physical form. The university only had access to the text in a format where each poem was an individual .pdf, which made for a disjointed (and digital) reading experience. Corey has such a knack for crafting punchy poem titles, and her images are vivid and wild, even if sometimes they felt flung together without elucidation. Her poems are sharp; they are avalanches, cascading forces of nature.
"I want to remember—small song small song small song—the many silences I could dip my feet into."
I really enjoyed this and wish I could have experienced Antidote in its physical form. The university only had access to the text in a format where each poem was an individual .pdf, which made for a disjointed (and digital) reading experience. Corey has such a knack for crafting punchy poem titles, and her images are vivid and wild, even if sometimes they felt flung together without elucidation. Her poems are sharp; they are avalanches, cascading forces of nature.
"I want to remember—small song small song small song—the many silences I could dip my feet into."
July 10, 2022
Poems I liked:
Tabernacle for an Adolescence (it reminded me of Florence Welch)
The Architecture of Fathers (perhaps the most touching poem in this collection)
To Have & To Hold (all three of them)
Confessional
Diurnal
Against the Reification of Isadora Duncan
Bestiary
Unfortunately, while I acknowledge the ideas have a lot of merit, the associations created do not always do justice to their potential. It is a tad too nebulous. Which confirms to me that the ideal artform for surrealism - if that's what this is - is never literature, not even poetry.
Tabernacle for an Adolescence (it reminded me of Florence Welch)
The Architecture of Fathers (perhaps the most touching poem in this collection)
To Have & To Hold (all three of them)
Confessional
Diurnal
Against the Reification of Isadora Duncan
Bestiary
Unfortunately, while I acknowledge the ideas have a lot of merit, the associations created do not always do justice to their potential. It is a tad too nebulous. Which confirms to me that the ideal artform for surrealism - if that's what this is - is never literature, not even poetry.
September 16, 2015
Damn this book.
It took me a while to adjust to Landingham's style, but when I did... this collection of poems is truly amazing. It captures grief amazingly and certain lines truly shook me to the core. Almost every poem had multiple lines underlined, if not the entire poem itself.
If you like contemporary poetry, this is a must read. Amazing.
I have way too many favorite lines to include them all, so I'm just going to include the ones I find first.
~~~quotes~~~
"every word was
a burial. The graveyard you were hiding in your
chest opened up for him and he was amused." (p. 17)
"I should be back in Oregon burning my father,
I am back in Oregon with an empty book
of matches, two hands." (p. 25)
"I wanted to fossilize right there on the linoleum." (p. 31)
"I mean dark shapes
the throat makes when opened toward
a scream." (p. 37)
"A person can mistake herself for the bee that stings her." (p. 40)
"the veins become
a map for neglect." (p. 41)
"Fog came out
of the ground to remind us it, too, was alive, and thus had
its own nothing." (p. 45)
It took me a while to adjust to Landingham's style, but when I did... this collection of poems is truly amazing. It captures grief amazingly and certain lines truly shook me to the core. Almost every poem had multiple lines underlined, if not the entire poem itself.
If you like contemporary poetry, this is a must read. Amazing.
I have way too many favorite lines to include them all, so I'm just going to include the ones I find first.
~~~quotes~~~
"every word was
a burial. The graveyard you were hiding in your
chest opened up for him and he was amused." (p. 17)
"I should be back in Oregon burning my father,
I am back in Oregon with an empty book
of matches, two hands." (p. 25)
"I wanted to fossilize right there on the linoleum." (p. 31)
"I mean dark shapes
the throat makes when opened toward
a scream." (p. 37)
"A person can mistake herself for the bee that stings her." (p. 40)
"the veins become
a map for neglect." (p. 41)
"Fog came out
of the ground to remind us it, too, was alive, and thus had
its own nothing." (p. 45)
May 6, 2015
Corey Van Landingham's debut collection of poems is stunning--it feels like a cave the reader is taken on a tour through, minerals and small animals on the periphery of the flashlight, occasionally straight ahead. Which is to say, the poems in ANTIDOTE are at once haunting and familiar, strange and wild. And the poems are full--of images, moments, memories, wishes, music.
The author's eye and ear for creating an image is astounding, often doubling back through the reader's initial reactions and own memories to create a unique movement, as does the splendid "The Architecture of Fathers," which opens "They move like haunted houses, which means / they don't move, but are moved inside." Van Landingham's verse is vivid, earnest, longing, smart and fierce, even when told at a whisper, which these poems often are. This is a great collection by any measure, but especially exciting because it marks the beginning of the career of a poet who promises a lot more greatness in the future.
The author's eye and ear for creating an image is astounding, often doubling back through the reader's initial reactions and own memories to create a unique movement, as does the splendid "The Architecture of Fathers," which opens "They move like haunted houses, which means / they don't move, but are moved inside." Van Landingham's verse is vivid, earnest, longing, smart and fierce, even when told at a whisper, which these poems often are. This is a great collection by any measure, but especially exciting because it marks the beginning of the career of a poet who promises a lot more greatness in the future.
February 3, 2016
The demon asked me (don't turn away now)
what body part I'd give up
not to have let him have me. I told him
how soft the undersides of your wrists were.
I told him what I told you-I'll be steadfast
while sleeping. I'll sleep until I'm true.
Ugh the way she creates these stark and transitory snapshots of life is wonderful.
what body part I'd give up
not to have let him have me. I told him
how soft the undersides of your wrists were.
I told him what I told you-I'll be steadfast
while sleeping. I'll sleep until I'm true.
Ugh the way she creates these stark and transitory snapshots of life is wonderful.
June 30, 2016
Investigates a certain blend of betrayals foisted upon women through the animal and the speaker's ardent belief that these strange juxtapositions reveal identity's greater truths.
June 3, 2024
i'm so incredibly lucky to have had corey as my poetry and creative nonfiction professor in college, her writing and the form it takes are masterful—full of alarm, heaviness, heartbreak, wittiness, and a wild surrealism draped with grief and love felt in the corners of your heart. deeply intimate poems with insights that genuinely make me see the world differently, a looking glass of purpose. i carry this book in my purse most days and return to it often, always so charming. <3
November 18, 2025
The Architecture of Fathers /
“They move like haunted houses, which means/ they don’t move, but are moved inside . . . The roof hasn’t been around for years, not since their growth in the attic pushed it off.”
“They move like haunted houses, which means/ they don’t move, but are moved inside . . . The roof hasn’t been around for years, not since their growth in the attic pushed it off.”
June 14, 2018
I love this book. I return to it again and again.
March 29, 2019
I was bewitched the whole time my dudes
January 23, 2020
3-4 on a couple poems.
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December 20, 2013Favorites: "Elegy in Which I Refuse to Turn Away," "This World is Only Going to Break Your Heart," "Confessional," "The Chair & the Birdcage," "Eclogue," "The Making of a Prophet," and "Valediction Lessons (I)"
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews