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Tender the Maker
"Again and again in Christina Hutchins’s exquisite Tender the Maker , poems startle us into awareness of the overlooked, the nearly always invisible (such as a library’s unused dictionary), and the marvelous, those aspects of life that come under the rubric of ‘mystery,’ in all senses of the word. Hutchins combines a pitch-perfect and precise lyricism with a postmodern sensibility of language’s materiality.”
—Cynthia Hogue, judge for the 2015 May Swenson Poetry Award
"An elegantly crafted, dense work that invites readers to travel on spiritual, philosophical, and historical journeys."
—Kirkus Reviews " Tender the Maker revisits the age-old comparison between poet and deity, highlighting its blind spots, namely the times when creating also means losing, destroying, forgetting. . . . Each poem becomes a map where time and space intersect and unearth connections that help us confront the weight of history, whether our own or that of others."
—Fjords Review
"[T]hroughout the book, Hutchins guides me into her patient, fragile, complex vision. . . . Both the depth and the precision of Hutchins’s work arise from her exact attention to the 'motion-in-relation' of herself as an artist, which is also attention to the tools of her work and to her imagination’s duty to honor the seen and the not seen."
— Beloit Poetry Journal The May Swenson Poetry Award is an annual competition named for May Swenson, one of America’s most provocative and vital writers. During her long career, Swenson was loved and praised by writers from virtually every school of American poetry. She left a legacy of fifty years of writing when she died in 1989. She is buried in her hometown of Logan, Utah.
—Cynthia Hogue, judge for the 2015 May Swenson Poetry Award
"An elegantly crafted, dense work that invites readers to travel on spiritual, philosophical, and historical journeys."
—Kirkus Reviews " Tender the Maker revisits the age-old comparison between poet and deity, highlighting its blind spots, namely the times when creating also means losing, destroying, forgetting. . . . Each poem becomes a map where time and space intersect and unearth connections that help us confront the weight of history, whether our own or that of others."
—Fjords Review
"[T]hroughout the book, Hutchins guides me into her patient, fragile, complex vision. . . . Both the depth and the precision of Hutchins’s work arise from her exact attention to the 'motion-in-relation' of herself as an artist, which is also attention to the tools of her work and to her imagination’s duty to honor the seen and the not seen."
— Beloit Poetry Journal The May Swenson Poetry Award is an annual competition named for May Swenson, one of America’s most provocative and vital writers. During her long career, Swenson was loved and praised by writers from virtually every school of American poetry. She left a legacy of fifty years of writing when she died in 1989. She is buried in her hometown of Logan, Utah.
- GenresPoetry
68 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 27, 2021
8/10
After publishing two chapbooks of poetry and the 2011 collection The Stranger Dissolves, Christina Hutchins won the Mary Swenson Poetry Award competition with the publication of Tender the Maker in 2015. From 2008 to 2012, Hutchins was the poet laureate of Albany, California—and she happens to be the first laureate the city has ever had.
Hutchins holds degrees from UC Davis, Harvard Divinity School, and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Other than being a widely published poet and scholarly essay writer, Hutchins “has worked as a biochemist, a Congregational (UCC) minister, and has taught process theology, philosophies of beauty and critique, and courses on poetry and theological imagination at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley”, according to her website (christinahutchins.net).
I discovered Hutchins and this collection in a Contemporary American Poetry course at Sacramento State. The class was taught by the poet Joshua McKinney, who admitted to us that he, too, entered this competition and lost to Hutchins. He was upset at first, until he read Tender the Maker and realized how good it is. It’s easy to understand being beaten out by a collection of poetry so well-crafted. The foreword to Tender the Maker is written by Cynthia Hogue, who judged the competition. She writes:
“Again and again in Christina Hutchins’ exquisite Tender the Maker, poems startle us into awareness of the overlooked, the nearly-always invisible (such as a library’s unused dictionary), and the marvelous, those aspects of life that come under the rubric of “mystery,” in all sense of the word. Hutchins combines a pitch-perfect and precise lyricism with a postmodern sensibility of language’s materiality.”
“Between the Pages of the Dictionary” is the poem that praises the unused library dictionary, and it’s one of my favorites from Tender the Maker. “Lift away lurk and let lowbrow breath . . . ” the poem begins. It’s already lovely and alive with the physical touch of language, what Hogue calls part of a postmodern sensibility. I simply love this image of words pressed up against each other, perhaps hugging, perhaps making love, or perhaps cramped together unable to breathe and sick of each other. The words lurk and lowbrow happen to fall on pages across from each other. The words are slammed together when the book is shut, as this dusty library copy often is. Human awareness of words and mindfulness toward language are what allow lurk and lowbrow to breathe. It’s an ancient act of appreciation and praise to slide a finger between the pages of the dictionary. Your gift is opening up an entire world of language—a record of cultural usage.
“Asylum” is a clever ars poetica in which smaller words are hidden within larger ones. For example, the line: “guarding something sly, a neverbefore.” [boldness added to reveal a verb slyly guarded—you must find this and many more on your own in the unbolded nine lines of the poem]. I didn’t get this one until Hutchins came to our class and explained it. It’s a fun poem to play around with, and another mindfulness reminder. Think of how many fun and beautiful things about language you miss out on when you don’t take your time—when you don’t appreciate your own attention! Hutchins, you are truly the empress of undertone.
The type of memory in an ordinary location that many may overlook is given attention in the poem “Cleaning Out the Garage in 1968”. Attention in this poem is not as romantic or fun as I have made this collection seem so far. This poem begins:
“we found Alexander the Salamander
slick orange and black-spotted
and missing for months
flattened into a dry membrane
under the word cardboard . . . ”
Heavy subject matter is dealt with in this collection for the makers who grieve, as the dedication reads.
“Humpty in Our Hands” reminds us how children’s fables and political foibles exist in the same world simultaneously—we affect them, and they affect us. In “Unrepeatable Poem” Hutchins deals with her father’s Alzheimer’s. “Beyond All Tenderness” is about being with her father as he dies.
But Tender the Maker is not a cynical work that drags you down into sadness. It is, after all it takes the reader through, a hopeful meditation. The final poem, “A Way Back to Life”, is “sort of a love poem”, according to a pencilled-in note I made under the title during her reading to our class. The line I underlined and drew a star next to is: “there is nowhere loss will refuse / to take us.”
I cherish my copy of Hutchins’ Tender the Maker, which the poet graciously signed for me after reading to our class:
for Dillon—
with best wishes for
your life in language +
in the wide world.
Bloom!
Christina Hutchins
30 Nov 2015
This review was written after a re-reading of this collection this year (early 2021).
After publishing two chapbooks of poetry and the 2011 collection The Stranger Dissolves, Christina Hutchins won the Mary Swenson Poetry Award competition with the publication of Tender the Maker in 2015. From 2008 to 2012, Hutchins was the poet laureate of Albany, California—and she happens to be the first laureate the city has ever had.
Hutchins holds degrees from UC Davis, Harvard Divinity School, and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Other than being a widely published poet and scholarly essay writer, Hutchins “has worked as a biochemist, a Congregational (UCC) minister, and has taught process theology, philosophies of beauty and critique, and courses on poetry and theological imagination at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley”, according to her website (christinahutchins.net).
I discovered Hutchins and this collection in a Contemporary American Poetry course at Sacramento State. The class was taught by the poet Joshua McKinney, who admitted to us that he, too, entered this competition and lost to Hutchins. He was upset at first, until he read Tender the Maker and realized how good it is. It’s easy to understand being beaten out by a collection of poetry so well-crafted. The foreword to Tender the Maker is written by Cynthia Hogue, who judged the competition. She writes:
“Again and again in Christina Hutchins’ exquisite Tender the Maker, poems startle us into awareness of the overlooked, the nearly-always invisible (such as a library’s unused dictionary), and the marvelous, those aspects of life that come under the rubric of “mystery,” in all sense of the word. Hutchins combines a pitch-perfect and precise lyricism with a postmodern sensibility of language’s materiality.”
“Between the Pages of the Dictionary” is the poem that praises the unused library dictionary, and it’s one of my favorites from Tender the Maker. “Lift away lurk and let lowbrow breath . . . ” the poem begins. It’s already lovely and alive with the physical touch of language, what Hogue calls part of a postmodern sensibility. I simply love this image of words pressed up against each other, perhaps hugging, perhaps making love, or perhaps cramped together unable to breathe and sick of each other. The words lurk and lowbrow happen to fall on pages across from each other. The words are slammed together when the book is shut, as this dusty library copy often is. Human awareness of words and mindfulness toward language are what allow lurk and lowbrow to breathe. It’s an ancient act of appreciation and praise to slide a finger between the pages of the dictionary. Your gift is opening up an entire world of language—a record of cultural usage.
“Asylum” is a clever ars poetica in which smaller words are hidden within larger ones. For example, the line: “guarding something sly, a neverbefore.” [boldness added to reveal a verb slyly guarded—you must find this and many more on your own in the unbolded nine lines of the poem]. I didn’t get this one until Hutchins came to our class and explained it. It’s a fun poem to play around with, and another mindfulness reminder. Think of how many fun and beautiful things about language you miss out on when you don’t take your time—when you don’t appreciate your own attention! Hutchins, you are truly the empress of undertone.
The type of memory in an ordinary location that many may overlook is given attention in the poem “Cleaning Out the Garage in 1968”. Attention in this poem is not as romantic or fun as I have made this collection seem so far. This poem begins:
“we found Alexander the Salamander
slick orange and black-spotted
and missing for months
flattened into a dry membrane
under the word cardboard . . . ”
Heavy subject matter is dealt with in this collection for the makers who grieve, as the dedication reads.
“Humpty in Our Hands” reminds us how children’s fables and political foibles exist in the same world simultaneously—we affect them, and they affect us. In “Unrepeatable Poem” Hutchins deals with her father’s Alzheimer’s. “Beyond All Tenderness” is about being with her father as he dies.
But Tender the Maker is not a cynical work that drags you down into sadness. It is, after all it takes the reader through, a hopeful meditation. The final poem, “A Way Back to Life”, is “sort of a love poem”, according to a pencilled-in note I made under the title during her reading to our class. The line I underlined and drew a star next to is: “there is nowhere loss will refuse / to take us.”
I cherish my copy of Hutchins’ Tender the Maker, which the poet graciously signed for me after reading to our class:
for Dillon—
with best wishes for
your life in language +
in the wide world.
Bloom!
Christina Hutchins
30 Nov 2015
This review was written after a re-reading of this collection this year (early 2021).
September 6, 2016
I just didn't connect with this book, which probably says more about me than it does the writing. I know the poems are excellent, and I know I SHOULD love them. Every line is beautiful, measure, precise. A few of the poems caught me by surprise or took me on a nostalgia trip, especially "Cleaning Out the Garage in 1968." On whole, however, I never felt enchanted by the collection. It's the Ashbery effect, I think: I know I'm reading something marvelous, but just don't get it as if I'm on the outside of an inside joke.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews