The Year of No Mistakes: A Collection of Poetry

by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

Intimate, observant, and unflinchingly honest, The Year of No Mistakes is Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz's tribute to the broken heart. Aptowicz's sixth poetry collection chronicles the author's story as she leaves New York City, her home of fourteen years, and bears witness to the unravelling of Aptowicz's decade-long relationship. Along the way, Aptowicz explores love, nostalgia, grief, desire, envy and hope in poems that showcase her emblematic funny and heartbreaking style. Stripped down, open, and intimate, this collection continues Aptowicz's tradition of engaging and auto-biographical work with new favorites like "Op-Ed for the Sad Sack Review," "Not Doing Something Wrong isn't the Same as Doing Something Right," and "December." For a poet already known for her honesty, The Year of No Mistakes shines with brave vulnerability. It is a triumph that will push even the most stubbornly busted heart back into the light.

Genres: Poetry, Female Authors

111 pages, Paperback

First published October 5, 2013

About the author

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz is an American poet who was recently awarded a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry.

She is the author of five books of poetry, including the recently released Everything is Everthing (Write Bloody Publishing), as well as the canonical slam history, Words in Your Face (Soft Skull Press), which U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins wrote “leaves no doubt that the slam poetry scene has achieved legitimacy and taken its rightful place on the map of contemporary literature.”

Founder of the three-time National Poetry Slam Championship venue, NYC-Urbana, Cristin has toured widely with her poetry, at venues as diverse as NYC’s Joe’s Pub, LA’s Largo Theatre and Australia’s Sydney Opera House. Cristin’s poetry books are published on Write Bloody Press, and available at all online & brick-and-order bookstores.

Her poetry has appeared (or is forthcoming) in McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, Rattle, Pank, Barrelhouse, MonkeyBicycle, decomP, Conduit and La Petite Zine (among others), as well as in anthologies such as Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Spoken Word, Learn Then Burn: Modern Poetry For the Classroom, Bowery Women and Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution (among others).

Reviews

[Ariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a person in your 20s or 30s, you need to read this. It will help you feel less alone in your pseudo-adult misadventures. The Year of No Mistakes reads like a story in which the protagonist could be anyone you know. The poems drip humor and breathe gentleness. They're deprecating and forgiving, and they speak of a heart that survived the slow burnout of a relationship and all that came after it, emerging admirably with a strong sense of self intact. Cristin's words capture the shape of so many feelings I've experienced, and they do it with both candid, aching honestly and laugh-out-loud playfulness. I just read it through again for the fourth or fifth time. It's one of my favorite collections!

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

BRB going to buy this for every person I've ever known

[Lira · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful poems; devastating breakup.

[Scott Woods · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a bravado that bubbles out of Aptowicz’s work that is not present in this latest collection. This is not a bad thing. The book is her most personal to date, and with this work we discover that not everything in her world is a joke. At the forefront of TYONM are her traditional and always-welcome traits: warm and accessible language, cut with a hip fearlessness in subject matter and form, spread out over many engaging scenarios. And yet, contextualized through an exploration of loss, we are treated to a collection that not only shows you who she is (all her books do that), but what she’s made of.

Aptowicz possesses a keen eye for good stories; it is what propels her catalog at large, and certainly her best work. Seeing that eye turned on herself (as opposed to squirrels on crack or lawn gnomes. See? An unassailable imagination!) is something to behold. It is an earnest gut-punch of a book, and stripped of her usual buoyancy, leaves us with one of the most honest collections of art this year. Notable poems include "33 1/3", "Austin", "Married Men" and "Not Doing Something Wrong isn't the Same as Doing Something Right."

[Anne Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best poet I have come across in some time.

[Karys McEwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been getting through a lot of poetry collections lately but this one blew everything else out of the water... incredible writing and so moving!

[Aoife · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gorgeous and often brutal telling of love and heartache and subsequent grief. I felt like the cities were characters and part of the relationship, particularly New York - gets me all excited to visit again in March.

Thank you to Kerry for another excellent collection of poetry to have shared with me.

[Elliot · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've heard a lot of great things about Aptowicz over the years, but this was my first time reading her poetry. I'm so glad I picked up this collection. This is a book centering around transitions. Moving away from New York and to Texas (and the amazing sense of place she evokes). The break-down of relationships, as well as the whirlwind passion of new ones. Finding your footing and loosing it all over again. These are poems of heartbreak and also hopefulness, the sorts of words that come from those times in our lives that seem the most uncertain and vivid. Relatable through and through but never easy nor simplistic. Aptowicz uses an economy of words to snap complex feelings into stark relief.

[Donald Armfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection by Aptowicz was different from her previous. More of life situations with the humor being more real. I really like her style and recommend her if you just stepped into Write Bloody Publishing.

It's like a walkthrough for a traveling poet and what one would see. I'll list my favorites.

-Manhattan
-Brooklyn
-West Philly
-Trickle Down Economics
-Cleave
-March
-The Closure Hotel
Tourist in the Place I Used to Live
-The End of It

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

2017 Reading Challenge- Read a book from someone else's bookshelf; BookRiot's 2017 ReadHarder Challenge- Read a book published by a micropress

I'm not really a huge fan of poetry but this was an exception to my norm. I connected with the themes and found myself enjoying the style and rhythm to the poems. The topics were personal but also relatable and I really felt like I was reading a friend's thoughts. Really well done.

[Ely · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really great collection. There were lots of poems I really connected to, and the ones that I didn't connect to, I still loved. Definitely interested in reading more of Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz's work!

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

If John is reading this, you told me to read this book like 2 years ago but I finally got around to it and WOW AM I SO HAPPY I DID IT WAS FUCKING AMAZING.
Aptowicz gets 5000 stars in my book for writing some honest, brutal, and rad poetry.

[xTx xTx · Rating 5 out of 5]

love
love

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

So in my defense, when he touched me, the lights of my body came on.
In my defense, the windows were thrown open. In my defense, spring.

The above excerpt is what made me want to read this collection of poetry. Divided into seven sections, chronicled here are several moves to different cities, a long-term relationship falling apart, the heartbreak that follows with its feeling of loss and many insecurities, finding your footing again, and a lot of introspection through it all. Structured as it was, this collection makes for a particularly cohesive text overall.

I really enjoyed the sixth section (it's horny), and the evolution of perspective on the long-term partner that went from helplessness and frustration to missing him to appreciation, as the speaker embarked on her journey towards closure (as per the blurb, Aptowicz draws from personal experience). You'd expect poems that have so much to say about a break-up to indulge in some bitterness, but not these ones. If anything, there's an underlying feeling of celebration and affirmation, very "don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened," culminating in the last poem "The End of It" that was rather refreshing.

A downside: Bar "Said the Fly Killing Itself Trying to Escape Through a Closed Window, Completely Ignoring the Open Door," the shortest poems didn't hit the mark with me, but then again they never seem to when it comes to modern poetry.

Some favorites: "The Bowery Bees," "Simulacrum," "33 & 1/3," "June," "Not Doing Something Wrong Isn’t the Same As Doing Something Right," "New Year’s Eve," "March," "Crush," "October," "November," "Atlas," "Bluegrass" and "December."

[Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

(4.5 Stars) The Year of No Mistakes felt effortless and honest. The poems had the perfect amount of distance, introspection, and heart. If you're a writer, you can only hope to write something that feels this natural. My favorites include:
* December
*Number One With a Bullet
*February
*33 & 1/3
*Married Men
*Op-Ed for The Sad Sack Review, Regarding News of Another Rash of Writer Suicides
*After the Break-Up, A Married Friend Tells Me She's Jealous Because of How Boring Her Marriage Can Be

[Trey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second book of hers that I've read. I love her voice: it's both accessible to most readers, but also had levels to it. This collecting chronicles her move with her longtime boyfriends from NYC to Austin and their subsequent breakup. This collection has one of my all-time favorite poems, "Wild Geese: after Mary Oliver" that you should read here: https://wordsfortheyear.com/2015/03/2...

[Andrea Janov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz is a modern confessional poet. She doesn't want to stick her head in an oven, but she does let us in to such embarrassingly beautifully honest, deep,raw places within her being, that we can't help but relive a similar time we did or thought or experienced that same thing. In The Year of No Mistakes, we see a second coming of age, the transition from the adulthood you thought you'd have, to the one that the universe doled out for you.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Get out of long-term relationship. Read poetry about getting out of a long-term relationship. What could go wrong? (You could cry a lot. A lot a lot. Be called out a lot. Cry some more.) My favorites were: simulacrum, to everyone who said it was going to be okay, cleave, your friends are having more sex than you, crush, after the break-up a married friend tells me she's jealous because of how boring her marriage can be.

[Powerispower · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cristin likes a list. Lists can be boring. A Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz list is a thing of beauty. Her beautiful things bring delight when they come through her mouth. Reading this collection was a joy. She shares more intimate insights into her self and her relationships then I know what to do with.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

In and out of and in love again. Poetry has rarely hit so close to home for me, and I've been reading and loving poetry all my life. Absolutely worth a read.

[Holly Fortune · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super solid! Warrants a reread.

[Bex · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know when you come across exactly the right book at exactly the right time? This was That Book, at That Time. Wow.

[Michelle Decicco grossbohlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved reading this book from beginning to end!!

[Jade Driscoll · Rating 3 out of 5]

I absolutely loved many individual lines/stanzas, but few poems in their entirety stuck out to me.

[Abigail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny, ridiculous, moving, and heartbreaking. A resoundingly enjoyable collection of poems.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. All the poems felt individual and yet related at the same time. Wonderful collection.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

The poem that led me to this collection ("December") is still my favorite. Because I swear I lived this, too:

When my body had forgotten its purpose,
when it just hung off my brainstem like a whipped mule.
When my hands only wrote. When my mouth only ate.
When my ass sat, my eyes read, when my reflexes
were answers to questions we all already knew.
Remember how it was then that you slid your hand
into me, a fork in the electric toaster of my body. Jesus,
where did all these sparks come from?

[Madalene · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book of poetry! The author focuses much on her moves across the country, and walking through cities, along with the more painful parts of having the trailing partner be unemployed, and the resulting breakup.

In part, the poems read a little like you are behind the poet's eyes, ala Being John Malkovich. Whether you like a sense of place, relationships, or personal musings, you are likely to enjoy this book.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed these poems about love, heartbreak, New York City and Austin, possibly because I have lived in each of them. Particular favorites: "Manhattan," "Your Wife," and "My Tiny God." Nice work, disarmingly simple, assembled from images that turn into ideas before you even have time to notice. Yes, poets are self-absorbed, stubborn, and passionately impractical--but hey, that's what we don't pay them for.

[Austen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cristin's poems just get better and better. After hearing her perform several at this year's WordXWord festival in Pittsfield, MA, I was all the more excited for the release of this collection, and it did not disappoint. I wonderful walk through time, love, and healing, The Year of No Mistakes is the book that should be mandatory reading for all 18-to-35-year-olds who think they hate poetry.