Heliopause

by Heather Christle

Heather Christle's stunning fourth collection blends disarming honesty with keen leaps of the imagination. Like the boundary between our sun's sphere of influence and interstellar space, from which the book takes its name, the poems in Heliopause locate themselves along the border of the known and unknown, moving with breathtaking assurance from the page to the beyond. Christle finds striking parallels between subjects as varied as the fate of Voyager 1, the uncertain conception of new life, the nature of elegy, and the decaying transmission of information across time. Nimbly engaging with current events and lyric past, Heliopause marks a bold shift and growing vision in Christle's work. An online reader's companion will be available.

Genres: Poetry, Adult

112 pages, Hardcover

First published March 9, 2015

About the author

Heather Christle is the author of The Crying Book (Catapult), a NYT Editor’s Choice, Indie Next Selection, and national bestseller that was translated into eight languages, awarded the Georgia Book Award for memoir, and adapted for radio by the BBC. An Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University in Atlanta, Christle is also the author of four poetry collections including The Trees The Trees (Octopus Books), which won the Believer Book Award and was adapted into a ballet by the Pacific Northwest Ballet. In 2021 she was the recipient of a George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship in nonfiction. Born in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire to a Merchant Mariner from North Dakota and an artist from London, Christle spent her teen years and early twenties immersed in the Boston punk scene. She attended Tufts University, graduating in 2004. After receiving her MFA from UMass Amherst in 2009, she was a Creative Writing Fellow at Emory University from 2009-11, and has also taught at UT Austin and Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in Decatur, Georgia, with her partner (poet and writer Christopher DeWeese), their child, and two cats.

Reviews

[Amanda Ventrudo]

heather christle i'm free on friday if you want to get dinner i just want to talk

[Paula Melchor]

una poesía increíble para pasar por la muerte -la luz, la oscuridad, las dos- temblando de risa y de amor. me encanta cómo las cosas hacen la luz y no al revés, y el tema de que nosotras no usamos el lenguaje, sino que el lenguaje nos usa a nosotras. lo subrayé y pintarrajée enterito.

"lamento/ que esperar el amor e imaginarlo/ equivalga a poseerlo/ aunque sea un instante/ de forma que cuando la imagen/ no llega nítida una siente/ no solo tristeza sino también una pérdida"

[Timothy Volpert]

the poems here are as lovely and striking as the cover art is. by happy serendipity, i just discovered the music of Laurie Spiegel while reading this book--one of her compositions was included on the Golden Record sent aboard the Voyager probe, the fate of which provides a recurring theme for this book. I was listening to Spiegel as I was finishing this book and it fit very beautifully together. Christle's poems remain deftly of this earth, even as they evoke a spacecraft drifting out into the infinite.

[Sarah]

Hauntingly beautiful. Enjoyed the imagery and thoughts in the poems.


*Stand up!
Good and straight like a tree
Good and stiff like
the rain-darkened gravestone
perpendicular
to the quiet*

[Angela]

I have somehow been given the label as a “science poet” in my MFA cohort, and I guess my appreciation for this collection tracks. I love the blend of outer space with the alchemical quality of language. This collection made me want to try new things: dropping punctuation, weaving lines together, long poems, epistles. Definitely a collection I will return to for inspiration.

[Cayla Dwyer]

every day I am grateful for stumbling upon Heather Christle in my university library

[Vincent Scarpa]

“If you are in the center it means
every edge you can imagine
is the very same distance away”—“Disintegration Loop 1.1”


I'm crazy about this book and about Heather Christle. She's on fire here as she looks at the beauty and pain of indeterminacy, in atemporal flux and flicker and flow. Moving, clear-eyed, full-hearted, smart as hell.

[Stephanie]

Not my favorite of her books, so I wanted to give it 4 stars. But certain poems stuck with me, and dear seth almost made me cry.

[Tate]

w.s. graham vibes and so this Slaps she says “and beauty is what beauty does to you” and yea that’s The Book! it does things to you

[Vanessa]

Honestly, I read this book last week but don’t remember much from it, so that probably says something.

I went in having high expectations because The Crying Book is one of my favorite books and I thought I would be met with that same kind of rawness, openness, and vulnerability. But Heliopause sort of just fell flat for me. It’s not a bad anthology by any means, it just didn’t make much of an impression on me. I did really enjoy the poems I Am Glad of Your Arrival and Dear Seth though!

[Carl Waluconis]

Writing poetry that is whimsical and at the same time poetically profound is difficult - in fact, some might say impossible. But Heather Christle somehow pulls it off. Occasionally it falls flat, but she is out there taking chances and the surprise her words can bring carry a new sort of treat with words. In "Not Much More Room in the Cemetery" she revisits the old theme in English poetry of contemplation in a cemetery:
I know that there is something else
that they are trying to teach me
and I am sorry for all the times
I have listened and not learned it
No I am not crying
I'm maybe um a demon
For certain I am waving this fruit fly away
That's the last words of the poem. I keep turning through the slim book and rereading, each reading bringing something new, but always her voice comes through - very lively. The heliosphere - that large sort of limit of our sun - is treated as an analogy behind much of the idea and imagery in the book. I'm not sure I fully get it yet, but poetry should do that, and I'll keep reading it.

[Caroline]

3.25 stars

The sad thing is that I know if I had read this collection during college I would have loved it. But I suppose my taste has changed. These poems were just a touch too whimsical at times for me, and although the collection is definitely cohesive in feel/technique, I didn't come away with a strong impression of themes. Perhaps a sense of existential dread permeating throughout? I will say the collections improves as it goes on, and I quite liked the "Dear Seth" series. Overall, I just think there's an aloofness to Christle's poems that is such a stark contrast to her prose work in The Crying Book, which felt very welcoming and generous. Not the reading experience I was expecting to have!

[Kristin F]

I wish I knew what to say about this book. I think a lot of these poems went over my head, and that’s ok. “Elegy for Neil Armstrong” always makes me cry, from the first time I saw it on Twitter (that’s actually the reason I picked up this book). And there’s something about “Dear Seth,” I just can’t describe it. The pull of space throughout, the clever use of language and punctuation and structure... these poems are so varied and so innovative and so real. Yes.

[Pau]

the i love you i want us both to eat well vibes in the penultimate poem when she says "tomorrow the baby hits the size / of a banana / which reminds me / to buy some for chris / (he is crazy for bananas) / i want them to make him feel well" 🥺

[María Agustina]

Me gustaría saber de qué manera este año me va a quebrar

[Paul Scott]

"Heliopause" is "the boundary of the heliosphere," according to the online dictionary I consulted, and the "heliosphere" is defined as "the region of space, encompassing the solar system, in which the solar wind has a significant influence." We are, then, dealing with boundaries, with the liminal, with zones where one place becomes another place.

The word shows up in its literal sense in the sequence "Dear Seth," a group of verse epistles. "Neil Armstrong died / the same day Voyager finally reached the limit / of our solar system," Christle notes in one letter, then adds in the next:


I am still thinking about space
For a long time they did not know
if Voyager had crossed the heliopause
and we lived
in the strange interim
of an event perhaps having occurred
in the uncertainty of something
having happened

Those moments that distinguish a "before" from an "after" recur throughout the book, like the deaths of friends ("Poem for Bill Cassidy"). The poems are often set in the "during," when we are no longer "before" but not yet "after." One of the longer pieces is an erasure poem based on the transcripts of Neil Armstrong's communications with mission control as he took humankind's first steps on the moon, for instance, but we also have that more familiar and longer-lasting watershed, pregnancy: ("Tomorrow the baby hits the size / of a banana").

The theme is a good fit for Christle. The shorter poems in the collection reminded me a lot of her earlier work and her ability to somehow situate her poems between whimsy and terror. This is how "Keep in Shape" ends:

See how
the weather does not write me
never phones
I can't pretend
that doesn't hurt
but I can
pretend I'm burning down my home

The little joke about the weather as bad boyfriend or negligent child turns into a confession of feeling and then into a vision of destruction...that is the echt Christle note, right there. Where are we? We are all over the map, all at once...that's where we are. I hope her (deserved) success as a prose writer does not mean she won't be publishing more poetry.

[Kanwarpal Singh]

the poems here are as lovely and striking as the cover art is. I love the blend of outer space with the alchemical quality of language. This collection made me want to try new things: dropping punctuation, weaving lines together, long poems, epistles. Definitely a collection I will return to for inspiration.

While reading this someone special, i came to know from her that the music of Laurie Spiegel, one of her compositions was included on the Golden Record which provides a recurring theme for this book. Then we both were enjoying the book while, listening to Spiegel as we finished this book and it fits very beautifully together. Soothingly beautiful, Enjoying the imagery and thoughts in the poems, metaphor and paradox, plus narration of thoughts is really a powerful thought provoking writing.

[Kelli]

“…I think/ of us laughing at death/ knowing/ and not minding that death laughs back” (74)

This is a moving collection of poetry about the in-between moments of life, the bits and pieces of ourselves that we scrawl on the margins of a larger story. This collection makes poetry out of throwaway moments, asking us to reconsider the moments we try to glide over. What are we leaving behind by not appreciating them in the moment?

I really appreciate this collection and the vivid and visceral imagery. I could see the people becoming bodies falling and I could almost taste those laughs at death on my tongue, a fleeting flavor. I’m quite jealous of several line-endings and the carefully devastating attention to enjambment. Intense and poignant!

Definitely recommend~

[Anatoly Molotkov]

"I keep forgetting I'm the smoke/ not the camera/ Then I see my dark/ joining to what's below". This magic collection from Heather Christle tenderly weaves together loaded half-thoughts and impactful mini-observations - I know I will be rereading it. I especially loved the first, long poem "Disintegration Loop 1.1".

[Ryan Bry]

Heather Christle is one of the few today who know how to speak a line of pure poem, and thankfully she does not abuse her power and instead weaves in the personal of her human response so we can have the terrible comfort that comes with being a thing of unchecked notice. Your words came at me, Heather Christle. Thank you for that.

[Alix]

"Just because we’ve broken my head
doesn’t mean we must glue it together
There’s other work to be done
and dark
grass freezing
There is some old light
to read by and large pink thumbs
And with my head apart
I think
the world can get in easy
This
pound of dirt I’m holding weighs a ton"

[Lindsay]

Heather Christle’s The Crying Book was my favorite read last year. Now, having read this most recent collection of poems, I can with confidence that she’s one of my favorite writers. What she does in this collection is breathtaking. I can’t wait to read it again.

[pati]

me gusta muchísimo la escritura desgajada de heather te va llevando en movimientos sutiles hacia un encuentro

"necesito la calma para que se amontonen los sustantivos", escribe o "¿qué es una hora en términos legales?" o " los cuerpos caen mucho más rápido que la noche" o

[Seth LaRue]

These felt more like a project that didn’t align wit me compared to hc’s other books I’ve love. Oh my honor it’s like picking your favorite child and one of them has a career you don’t really understand

[Sam Albala]

Ancestors / homage / black out / math / science / longing / communicating with … / resolve / haunted / I’m the smoke / reversing / smoke / let the darkness / letters / flowers / learned / listen / how long / Herman Melvin’s barn

[Lauren]

Makes my brain feel good and useful, in ways it hasn't been stretched in a while.

[Tyler Wissman]

Can't take myself away from this collection:

"To make nothing/ draw a circle/ around what isn't there"

"a place to let/ the world in/ a way of not ending// I loved you so/ I had to crawl inside"

[Benjamin Niespodziany]

Revisited this one again today. Yet another terrific collection from Christle, who does not disappoint.

[Salty Swift]

Any collection that dedicates a long poem to William Basinski is more than alright in my books!

[DaniHappy]

This is one of those poetry collections I'll have to read at least once more and think about the poems a bit.