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Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent
Winner of the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize A stunning debut book of poems from a bold new voice unafraid to engage with the exigencies of our contemporary world. In Liz Howard’s wild, scintillating debut, the mechanisms we use to make sense of our worlds – even our direct intimate experiences of it – come under constant scrutiny and a pressure that feels like love. What Howard can accomplish with language strikes us as electric, a kind of alchemy of perception and catastrophe, fidelity and apocalypse. The waters of Northern Ontario shield country are the toxic origin and an image of potential. A subject, a woman, a consumer, a polluter; an erotic force, a confused brilliance, a very necessary form of urgency – all are loosely tethered together and made somehow to resonate with our own devotions and fears; made “to be small and dreaming parallel / to ceremony and decay.” Liz Howard is what contemporary poetry needs right now.
114 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 14, 2015
7 people are currently reading
244 people want to read
About the author
Liz Howard
2 books143 followersLIZ HOWARD’s debut collection Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent won the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize, was shortlisted for the 2015 Governor General’s Award for poetry, and was named a Globe and Mail top 100 book. A National Magazine Award finalist, her recent work has appeared in Canadian Literature, Literary Review of Canada, Room Magazine and Best Canadian Poetry 2021. Her second collection, Letters in a Bruised Cosmos, was published by McClelland & Stewart in June 2021. Howard received an Honours Bachelor of Science with High Distinction from the University of Toronto, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. She served as the 2018-2019 Distinguished Canadian Writer in Residence at the University of Calgary and has completed creative writing and Indigenous arts residencies at UBC Kelowna, Douglas College, Sheridan College, and The Capilano Review. She is an Adjunct Professor and instructor in the Department English at the University of Toronto and a Poetry Editor for Buckrider Books, an imprint of Wolsak & Wynn. She is of mixed settler and Anishinaabe heritage. Born and raised on Treaty 9 territory in northern Ontario, she currently lives in Toronto.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
September 3, 2016
Rereading. I found this very difficult poetry, found that I got nothing from it. Little about Howard's poetry resonated with me. Yet I know the book has merit. It won the Griffin Poetry Prize this year, judged the best of 500+ books by the judges Alice Oswald, Tracy K. Smith, and Adam Sol, who made Howard the youngest winner in the prize's history. I understand the failure isn't hers in reaching out to me, reader, but a failure on my part to work hard at digging away at her layers of language and chipping away at the hard surfaces of meaning to find the vein to mine for understanding. So I did what I rarely do, I immediately got the book back off the shelf and started it again. Part stubbornness and unwillingness to admit failure, part faith in the book's value and my being able to appreciate it. When you revisit landscapes, you always see things you missed before.
It was only through a careful rereading of the book, the notes and glossary Howard provides, and a couple of reviews that this difficult book began to come into enough focus that I could distinguish shape and sense. Her own notes suggest a kinship with the harmonies first heard in Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha. Howard is partly of Anishinaabe descent, those Indigenous peoples from around the Great Lakes. Her poetry combines the Indigenous/European combination in herself, I think, in directly referencing Ludwig Wittgenstein through an epigraph to "Thinktent" and a direct quotation from the poem "Standard Time," as well as the coyote trickster figure appealed to in "A Wake." These poems are autobiographical, I think. She's the citizen here in what's certainly a central poem of the European/First Peoples combination allowing her "to dream a science" while, at the same time, staying
"inside my own head perpetually
not simply Wittgenstein's girl
but an infinite citizen in a shaking tent",
the tent where, her notes tell us, "spirits are consulted to obtain beyond human knowledge." I unscramble this to mean her poetry should be seen as looking for what's beyond human knowledge, which would be a spirituality integrating place and cognition.
Some poems are made up of word associations that reference the Canada we'd see north of Lake Superior, the geology we find there and all its life forms. I'm guessing the region was Howard's original physical home--she's based in Toronto now--and continues to be a spiritual home. These imagistic portraits use the words of that country to not only formulate the ecology, landscape, and heritage there but also to absorb the case that's the other world making Liz Howard.
I've read that in the layers of these difficult poems are also Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Plath, and Keats. I'll have to let another reading try to lift them into a ground high enough to expose the seams where they're hiding, and hopefully bring a greater understanding of the whole. Maybe in a couple of years. I look forward to it.
It was only through a careful rereading of the book, the notes and glossary Howard provides, and a couple of reviews that this difficult book began to come into enough focus that I could distinguish shape and sense. Her own notes suggest a kinship with the harmonies first heard in Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha. Howard is partly of Anishinaabe descent, those Indigenous peoples from around the Great Lakes. Her poetry combines the Indigenous/European combination in herself, I think, in directly referencing Ludwig Wittgenstein through an epigraph to "Thinktent" and a direct quotation from the poem "Standard Time," as well as the coyote trickster figure appealed to in "A Wake." These poems are autobiographical, I think. She's the citizen here in what's certainly a central poem of the European/First Peoples combination allowing her "to dream a science" while, at the same time, staying
"inside my own head perpetually
not simply Wittgenstein's girl
but an infinite citizen in a shaking tent",
the tent where, her notes tell us, "spirits are consulted to obtain beyond human knowledge." I unscramble this to mean her poetry should be seen as looking for what's beyond human knowledge, which would be a spirituality integrating place and cognition.
Some poems are made up of word associations that reference the Canada we'd see north of Lake Superior, the geology we find there and all its life forms. I'm guessing the region was Howard's original physical home--she's based in Toronto now--and continues to be a spiritual home. These imagistic portraits use the words of that country to not only formulate the ecology, landscape, and heritage there but also to absorb the case that's the other world making Liz Howard.
I've read that in the layers of these difficult poems are also Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Plath, and Keats. I'll have to let another reading try to lift them into a ground high enough to expose the seams where they're hiding, and hopefully bring a greater understanding of the whole. Maybe in a couple of years. I look forward to it.
August 4, 2019
This book blew me away. A lot of people have commented that it was "difficult" but I think they are mostly just getting scared off by the big words. It's like scientific and medical terminology smashed into the landscape of northern Ontario smashed into the Anishinaabe experience of the (not-so-finished) aftermath of colonization. Which according to the notes makes sense, since the language was apparently "partially culled" from scientific documents on the landscape of northern Ontario and ethnographic documents about Indigenous life. Anyway. Super great. I kept finding lines that hit me like BAM.
Oh and one more thing--I partly think that some of the people complaining it's "hard to read" are biased against Indigenous poetry that doesn't immediately reveal itself as confessional. Which isn't to say this isn't confessional poetry at all--it is, in many ways. But it doesn't fall over itself to be legible, for sure.
Oh and one more thing--I partly think that some of the people complaining it's "hard to read" are biased against Indigenous poetry that doesn't immediately reveal itself as confessional. Which isn't to say this isn't confessional poetry at all--it is, in many ways. But it doesn't fall over itself to be legible, for sure.
May 25, 2015
Liz Howard’s Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent is an astounding first collection. Liz has a firm grasp on a diverse set of lexicons, and she’s able to blend them together into one tightly knit tapestry that can be both overwhelmingly beautiful and ugly at once. The collection deals through geography, identity, and cognition in a way that only a Northern Ontarian with solid foundation in the economy of words and a deft grasp of Nietzsche could.
September 21, 2015
The finest book of poetry I've read so far this year.
April 25, 2019
The evocative title and the extravagant advance publicity excited me to special order this slim volume over a year ago from the library. When I finally got my hands on it I swooned at the cover and the table of contents dazzles with promise. The poems?
These are opaque, truculent, requiring patience and multiple readings, best out loud.
First exposure: reading slow, almost creeping through an impenetrable wall slapped by a wall of thorns. Strong nouns harsh verbs, spare of adjectives.
naught a human heart nearshore the minimum
criteria
from A rude Inscription at the Top of Heaven p39
It's as if LH had placed slips of paper with all her favorite words into a pillow case and tossed, then fastidiously placed them randomly on the page.
2nd reading: It's a strain in fact to attempt to assemble meaning from the occasional brilliant phrase attached by a slender thread to a concept riding north by northwest on the back of a dead walrus,
the night rears up from under
this lost fur inversion
modernity is so destabilizing
from Bingo Riot p89
3rd reading: I take the book back to the library, irritated and feeling like I failed the poems.
I can't detach and renew for another few weeks.
And gradually, the poems open to me. I fall into the staggering rhythms and the furious energy of a woman expressing herself with explicit intentions.
I tie a knot
around the throat of all knowledge....
when presented with history in the form of an ellipsis
I must continue...
p77
These are opaque, truculent, requiring patience and multiple readings, best out loud.
First exposure: reading slow, almost creeping through an impenetrable wall slapped by a wall of thorns. Strong nouns harsh verbs, spare of adjectives.
naught a human heart nearshore the minimum
criteria
from A rude Inscription at the Top of Heaven p39
It's as if LH had placed slips of paper with all her favorite words into a pillow case and tossed, then fastidiously placed them randomly on the page.
2nd reading: It's a strain in fact to attempt to assemble meaning from the occasional brilliant phrase attached by a slender thread to a concept riding north by northwest on the back of a dead walrus,
the night rears up from under
this lost fur inversion
modernity is so destabilizing
from Bingo Riot p89
3rd reading: I take the book back to the library, irritated and feeling like I failed the poems.
I can't detach and renew for another few weeks.
And gradually, the poems open to me. I fall into the staggering rhythms and the furious energy of a woman expressing herself with explicit intentions.
I tie a knot
around the throat of all knowledge....
when presented with history in the form of an ellipsis
I must continue...
p77
July 30, 2022
3.5 stars A beautiful collection of poetry <3
Read
September 17, 2015http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2015/0...
Review by Sarah Hipworth
When Percy Shelley wrote that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," he is understood to have meant that artists make and maintain the mores of a civil society by laying the groundwork for other branches of learning. Had he written his Defence of Poetry today rather than in 1820, Shelley would likely have to support his statement with a little scientific theory. He might have used conceptual metaphor theory from linguistics, which tells us that metaphors organize and express our experiences while creating our realities. Poetry, more than other forms of communication, uses metaphor. Metaphor conditions thought.
Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent by Liz Howard and A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes by Madhur Anand blend the languages of science with the aesthetics of poetry. Howard, a cognitive researcher, remixes the languages of neuroscience, philosophy, literary theory and environmental science; Anand, a theoretical ecologist, the language of complex systems theory, mathematics, and evolutionary biology.
Beyond the learned vocabulary, an enmeshment of the ecological and the human, and the implicit expression of the feminist edict "the personal is the political," the similarities in their poetic styles end.
Read more here: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2015/0...
Review by Sarah Hipworth
When Percy Shelley wrote that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," he is understood to have meant that artists make and maintain the mores of a civil society by laying the groundwork for other branches of learning. Had he written his Defence of Poetry today rather than in 1820, Shelley would likely have to support his statement with a little scientific theory. He might have used conceptual metaphor theory from linguistics, which tells us that metaphors organize and express our experiences while creating our realities. Poetry, more than other forms of communication, uses metaphor. Metaphor conditions thought.
Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent by Liz Howard and A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes by Madhur Anand blend the languages of science with the aesthetics of poetry. Howard, a cognitive researcher, remixes the languages of neuroscience, philosophy, literary theory and environmental science; Anand, a theoretical ecologist, the language of complex systems theory, mathematics, and evolutionary biology.
Beyond the learned vocabulary, an enmeshment of the ecological and the human, and the implicit expression of the feminist edict "the personal is the political," the similarities in their poetic styles end.
Read more here: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2015/0...
May 3, 2022
Full disclosure: hype is just a wretched poisonous thing, and its shadow is probably where my troubles with this collection come from.
A lot of work to get into a lot of the ideas, which I’m fine with, but so much of the language is clinical and jargon’y and there’s no fun had with any of it. I can picture in my mind’s eye the kinda folks who would love this kind of poetry, and it’s all academics and snobs. I don’t think that Howard’s poetry is uncommunicative, but I think it would benefit from a bit of slippage, a bit of play, and from shedding the high-literary posture that it’s costumed in.
When I read lines like “to be a shopkeeper in the showroom of nouns / what to purchase and what / to disavow” I really don’t think the collection is working, but the affect is in here in glorious runs too. Howard might be too smart for a lot of us readers as well, but when this book works, it realllly works. I look forward to reading more work by her in the future, with hopes she’ll loosen up some, be a bit more, idk, real? She back-cover-blurb’d Chernoff’s ‘Delet This,’ which I just finished, so I know there’s a draw to silliness and fun in her, and she’s just gotta deploy it.
If you read contemporary poetry, you should read this, but give yourself a lot of time to spend with it, and check out the info in the tail end of the book to help situate yrself early on as well.
A lot of work to get into a lot of the ideas, which I’m fine with, but so much of the language is clinical and jargon’y and there’s no fun had with any of it. I can picture in my mind’s eye the kinda folks who would love this kind of poetry, and it’s all academics and snobs. I don’t think that Howard’s poetry is uncommunicative, but I think it would benefit from a bit of slippage, a bit of play, and from shedding the high-literary posture that it’s costumed in.
When I read lines like “to be a shopkeeper in the showroom of nouns / what to purchase and what / to disavow” I really don’t think the collection is working, but the affect is in here in glorious runs too. Howard might be too smart for a lot of us readers as well, but when this book works, it realllly works. I look forward to reading more work by her in the future, with hopes she’ll loosen up some, be a bit more, idk, real? She back-cover-blurb’d Chernoff’s ‘Delet This,’ which I just finished, so I know there’s a draw to silliness and fun in her, and she’s just gotta deploy it.
If you read contemporary poetry, you should read this, but give yourself a lot of time to spend with it, and check out the info in the tail end of the book to help situate yrself early on as well.
Read
October 15, 2016Winner of the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize. This really challenged me, and I definitely felt lost at times, but I enjoyed chiselling away at the layers of meaning - though doing so on my work day commute was maybe not the best choice! Cerebral and complex poems, maybe more than is my usual taste, but I would re-visit them happily in future. Spoke to me most - "Look Book" (which was actually breathtaking) and "Watershed and Shield Reminiscence," which had an amazing structure).
May 5, 2016
Combustable materials lie everywhere in the underbrush, frequently bursting into flame.
December 19, 2016
A must read.
September 29, 2017
Poetry exists in a state of exaggerated juxtaposition, which cancels comparatives out.
Chris Roberts, God Ascendent
Chris Roberts, God Ascendent
February 22, 2023
I had to read this for school. There is good poetry in the world, and this is not it for me. I hate talking badly about books, but I had no idea what was happening the entire time.
February 27, 2020
“Your eyes open the night’s slow static at a loss
to explain this place you’ve returned to from above;
cedar along a broken shore, twisting in a wake of fog.
I’ve lived in rooms with others, of no place and no mind
trying to bind a self inside the contagion of words while
your eyes open the night’s slow static. At a loss
to understand all that I cannot say, as if you came
upon the infinite simply by thinking and it was
a shore of broken cedar twisting in a wake of fog.
If I moan from an animal throat it is in hope you
will return to me what I lost learning to speak.
Your eyes open the night’s slow static at a loss
to ever know the true terminus of doubt, the limits of skin.
As long as you hold me I am doubled from without and within:
a wake of fog unbroken, a shore of twisted cedar.
I will press myself into potential, into your breath,
and maybe what was lost will return in sleep once I see
your eyes open into the night's slow static, at a loss.
Broken on a shore of cedar. We twist in a wake of fog.”
(“Wake”)
*
Liz Howard has a way of finding really arresting phrases — at least once a page there was something that made stop and go, wow, love the implications of this! I’m less sure, however, about the poems taken as wholes — I liked them, but many of them didn’t quite felt like they stood up to the promise of the language in them, if that makes sense.
to explain this place you’ve returned to from above;
cedar along a broken shore, twisting in a wake of fog.
I’ve lived in rooms with others, of no place and no mind
trying to bind a self inside the contagion of words while
your eyes open the night’s slow static. At a loss
to understand all that I cannot say, as if you came
upon the infinite simply by thinking and it was
a shore of broken cedar twisting in a wake of fog.
If I moan from an animal throat it is in hope you
will return to me what I lost learning to speak.
Your eyes open the night’s slow static at a loss
to ever know the true terminus of doubt, the limits of skin.
As long as you hold me I am doubled from without and within:
a wake of fog unbroken, a shore of twisted cedar.
I will press myself into potential, into your breath,
and maybe what was lost will return in sleep once I see
your eyes open into the night's slow static, at a loss.
Broken on a shore of cedar. We twist in a wake of fog.”
(“Wake”)
*
Liz Howard has a way of finding really arresting phrases — at least once a page there was something that made stop and go, wow, love the implications of this! I’m less sure, however, about the poems taken as wholes — I liked them, but many of them didn’t quite felt like they stood up to the promise of the language in them, if that makes sense.
November 29, 2017
Liz Howard's collection inspires the writer, the reader and the creative mind in me. I can't help but feel as though I have come through a journey full of wonders and discoveries in every word written. Here is just a snippet of what is between the pages of this insightful volume from a poem entitled "A WAKE"- Your eyes open the night's slow static at loss
to explain this place you've returned to from above;
cedar along a broken shore, twisting in a wake of fog.
There is so much written in this volume that it is difficult to limit oneself to just one reading, somewhere down the line this will be read again and it will have a place on my shelf of prose and poetry that I treasure for all that they bring to my mind, heart and soul.
to explain this place you've returned to from above;
cedar along a broken shore, twisting in a wake of fog.
There is so much written in this volume that it is difficult to limit oneself to just one reading, somewhere down the line this will be read again and it will have a place on my shelf of prose and poetry that I treasure for all that they bring to my mind, heart and soul.
March 8, 2018
Howard’s writing lives within a space that is influenced by her traumatic childhood experiences, advanced education in the sciences, Indigenous identity (or loss of), and philosophical views of nature and metaphysics. She uses ekphrasis in her poetry to recall memories in a way that encourages the reader to re-live them through her perspective. Her extensive vocabulary in anatomy provides an experience to the reader that has every part of our body vibrating as we walk through the rich imagery of her world.
The audience of this book falls into two categories: those who have an extensive vocabulary and those who are willing to put in the work. Since I fell in the latter group, I looked up around 200 words in the dictionary and read the book three times.
The audience of this book falls into two categories: those who have an extensive vocabulary and those who are willing to put in the work. Since I fell in the latter group, I looked up around 200 words in the dictionary and read the book three times.
February 27, 2018
This collection is a masterclass in form and experimentation. Not only is it a kick-ass meditation on post-colonialism, it's also a gorgeous study of language. This collection gets under your skin and stays there. The kind of collection I come to again and again for inspiration. LOVE.
March 12, 2017
A lot of these poems I was in love with. There were sections that I wasn't a huge fan of but overall, it's a beautiful collection
Read for ENGL 4471: Contemporary Canadian Poetry
Read for ENGL 4471: Contemporary Canadian Poetry
October 3, 2017
Absolutely brilliant!
April 22, 2020
Howard is a Canadian Anishinaabe writer with a background in cognitive neuroscience. I mention that because reading some of these poems made me feel as if I was trying to comprehend work written by someone writing in another language that I had no idea how to understand.
Howard fuses together indigenous language, complex scientific terminology, and Canadian/Indigenous geographic landmarks. The combination of these factors is intense and at times, confusing.
While I struggled to understand the meaning behind a fair number of these poems, when I did understand something, it hit hard. With multiple reads, I think I will discover more and more meaning behind the poems.
I suggest this book to you if you would like to challenge yourself. This is poetry that does not instantly reveal itself to the reader. Howard is brilliant, and many who understand this book better than I do sing its praises. So, please let me know if you end up reading it!
This is an excerpt from a poem I liked called North by South:
“In another dream
it’s evening
i’m to photograph
three women who face me
with their babies
bundled in their arms
poet scientist Anishinaabe
smile at me
and one by one
the babies
explode into flames
that same year I sat looking out
of the living room window
at a boulder across the street
a glacial erratic split into three
pieces by the growth of two birch trees
i remember when that stone was whole
my mother said behind me
this is what life does”
Howard fuses together indigenous language, complex scientific terminology, and Canadian/Indigenous geographic landmarks. The combination of these factors is intense and at times, confusing.
While I struggled to understand the meaning behind a fair number of these poems, when I did understand something, it hit hard. With multiple reads, I think I will discover more and more meaning behind the poems.
I suggest this book to you if you would like to challenge yourself. This is poetry that does not instantly reveal itself to the reader. Howard is brilliant, and many who understand this book better than I do sing its praises. So, please let me know if you end up reading it!
This is an excerpt from a poem I liked called North by South:
“In another dream
it’s evening
i’m to photograph
three women who face me
with their babies
bundled in their arms
poet scientist Anishinaabe
smile at me
and one by one
the babies
explode into flames
that same year I sat looking out
of the living room window
at a boulder across the street
a glacial erratic split into three
pieces by the growth of two birch trees
i remember when that stone was whole
my mother said behind me
this is what life does”
January 12, 2024
This is one of those collections that will reveal something new on each reading. Being local, I am also looking forward to hearing Liz read again and glean something new from the words spoken aloud.
While for me, this wasn't necessarily my favourite poetry collection of all time, I appreciate so much of it. Lately I've been loving Indigenous authors and artists in general for the unique method of storytelling. Indigenous art tends to take a broader view of the world while at the same time honing in on minute details in nature, home, kinship etc. It also tends to tell stories in a non-linear way, which is a paradigm shift when you are used to a beginning-middle-end formula that dominates the literary sphere.
All this to say. This book was a bit hard to read and the meaning isn't always clear. But that is exactly it's primary strength. It's more about feeling, curiosity and expansion than understanding rooted in a colonial, methodical mindset.
This collection to me is a nice addition to de-colonize my bookshelf and own practice of reading and finding meaning in art and writing.
While for me, this wasn't necessarily my favourite poetry collection of all time, I appreciate so much of it. Lately I've been loving Indigenous authors and artists in general for the unique method of storytelling. Indigenous art tends to take a broader view of the world while at the same time honing in on minute details in nature, home, kinship etc. It also tends to tell stories in a non-linear way, which is a paradigm shift when you are used to a beginning-middle-end formula that dominates the literary sphere.
All this to say. This book was a bit hard to read and the meaning isn't always clear. But that is exactly it's primary strength. It's more about feeling, curiosity and expansion than understanding rooted in a colonial, methodical mindset.
This collection to me is a nice addition to de-colonize my bookshelf and own practice of reading and finding meaning in art and writing.
March 20, 2023
I, like many others who read this book, can comprehend its merit and significance as an award-winning volume of poetry, but I could not relate to it. I found it difficult to understand, and even to read with the flow I think the author intended (I had to reread verses more than once to find the flow) until I read others’ reviews of it.
I enjoyed a few of the poems in the second half of the book, but it took me a while to recognize the author’s indigenous lens. I am not one who will revisit this book and read it several times in order to try to respond more emotionally, philosophically, or psychologically to it. I can better understand and appreciate the work of Indigenous poet, Duke Redbird, and am more likely to revisit any poet’s work that moves me profoundly, but this isn’t it.
I enjoyed a few of the poems in the second half of the book, but it took me a while to recognize the author’s indigenous lens. I am not one who will revisit this book and read it several times in order to try to respond more emotionally, philosophically, or psychologically to it. I can better understand and appreciate the work of Indigenous poet, Duke Redbird, and am more likely to revisit any poet’s work that moves me profoundly, but this isn’t it.
January 1, 2025
4.5/5 While very abstract for someone who hasn't read this type of poetry before, this read was transformative. Howard's poetry is almost like a puzzle in that every word, line, and stanza is a piece with a specific purpose used to create the poem's meaning. Analysing each one was a treat; the fact you can learn something new with each re-read deeply enhances the experience! Highly recommend this work alongside her other poetry collection (esp if you are interested in the intersections of indigenous cosmology, astronomy, and psychology)!
July 2, 2024
WOAH, required reading -- I haven't read something quite like this before, bringing an intense (sometimes dizzying) playful lyricism with a scientist's precision to the experience of being, being in the bush, in a tailings pond, in a see-through dress, in a dump, in a lab at U if T; the confluence of history of the present moment, through the speakers experience as a mixed indigenous person. Just woah!!
February 27, 2018
I return to this collection of poetry again and again for its attention to sound, texture and word play. Howard's thoughtful engagement with ideas surrounding assimilation, decolonization, and feminism is electric. There is a circular motion to the book that will haunt you in the most wonderful way. This is one of my all time favourite poetry collections. Worth the read.
April 21, 2020
Each poem warranted readings and rereadings and rerereadings. Some of them hit immediately, others I feel like I'm just barely beginning to grasp, but all of them struck me somehow and urged me to read more closely. This is not an easy book by any means--but it is well worth the work of exploring every poem. I'm excited to return to this collection over the years.
January 27, 2021
I recognize that this is really good, but also that I’m kinda bouncing off of it. That, or I’m just not well versed enough in poetry (or whatever other background) to feel like I’m really having it click. I’m going to have to revisit this
February 6, 2024
lush poems and sharp, harm spoken aloud and colonizers revealed from under their stones, pilfered language collaged and made gorgeous, indigenous power burning and relaying a torch to new poets and new types of people free from descartes
January 22, 2018
The majority of this went right over my head...
June 10, 2018
I am going to immediately read this book again.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews