A Woman of Property

by Robyn Schiff

A new book from a poet whose work is "wild with imagination, unafraid, ambitious, inventive" (Jorie Graham)

Located in a menacing, gothic landscape, the poems that comprise A Woman of Property draw formal and imaginative boundaries against boundless mortal threat, but as all borders are vulnerable, this ominous collection ultimately stages an urgent and deeply imperiled boundary dispute where haunting, illusion, the presence of the past, and disembodied voices only further unsettle questions of material and spiritual possession. This is a theatrical book of dilapidated houses and overgrown gardens, of passageways and thresholds, edges, prosceniums, unearthings, and root systems. The unstable property lines here rove from heaven to hell, troubling proportion and upsetting propriety in the name of unfathomable propagation. Are all the gates in this book folly? Are the walls too easily scaled to hold anything back or impose self-confinement? What won't a poem do to get to the other side?


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

96 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 29, 2016

Reviews

[Laurel Perez · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of poetry features a collection of non-rhyming poems, some of which stretch over a multiple of pages. Topics include deer hunting, flu season, a chair, flowers, food and others. I often love a long meditative poem, but some of these didn't have enough balls in the air to keep me attentive. There were some lovely moments, but I found myself rushing through instead of simmering on the language of these rather colloquial poems. There is some good work here, just not my favorite.

[Brittany Mishra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this book. I was in the right mindset to suspend and let the poet take me on this journey of words and word games, and alliterations and play and sarcasm and irony. I wasn't sure what all happened in these poems, but the way the poems moved from subject to subject, word to word was intentional and with play. I found myself playing with words after reading these poems, my inner child seemed awoken with quarrels, queries, quarries, and quarters. Ahh, this was fun.

[Jai Hamid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goodreads is showing that this book is to be published in three days, however, I was able to read it tonight at my local Barnes and Noble. Dreamy, melodic, and lush, the blending of mythos (Clytemnestra and Grendel's Mother, as examples) with the myths of capitalism (Pepsi Co. and Kindle, as other examples) create a dynamic mixing of everyday "realities."

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh. I appreciated the length of the narrative poems, but I feel like they don't actually hang together with any sort of internal narrative. For example, one titles "A Hearing" starts out like a deposition and then veers off into what feels like a completely different subjects. "Amerithrax" was probably the one that held together the best and was clearly composed in the post-anthrax-in-the-mail-scare era.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of dark, dreamlike, twisting poems. I’m still very uneducated when it comes to poetry but this felt different. Either I’m starting to understand poetry or Robyn Schiff’s poetry understands me.

This reads like a trippy dream with vivid, visceral language. My favorite poems began in a mundane scene of domestic life and then focused in on the dark depths beneath the surface.

[A.T.Panezo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book: A Woman of Property Author: Robyn Schiff Publisher: Penguin Poets

One sentence summary: The speaker's internal world intertwined and sometimes in opposition with the external world surrounding her.

Thoughts: I only enjoyed 5 poems out of this whole book because those five poems were the easiest to understand. I like my poetry simple and unpretentious. It seems like poetry is becoming like runway fashion where designers make ugly unwearable clothes and call it "art". Maybe in another life, I would pick this book up again and read it and have more patience but for now, I'm into just understanding what I'm reading.

A good read for: people who are a lot more patient with chewing words.

[Saru · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although her words are enchanting and easy to read, I'm not very fond of long poems as it is very easy to lose track, especially when the verse and paragraph divisions are not natural.
Besides, it is way to much expensive for the edition, a mid-quality paperback (although with a beautiful cover) book with no more than 70 pages.

[SmarterLilac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Subtle and dark. These poems have great heft, even heartier than what is shown in their frequently generous length. I'm happy to find a poet who values the long form, a rarity in this age of minimalism.

[YZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Periodically I paused and thought surely I must give up writing now.

[Taylor Napolsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work is complex, leaving room for many rereads. There's lots of thought provoking contemplation going on, the way each poem feels like a personal exploration, long and discursive.

[J]

There was a need
to be weak and I met
it. I appeared in the confusion
between strength and
surrender, as if out of nowhere,
that’s the illusion.
I was reared
ruminating
in a thicket of
sorrow with a beautiful
string of drool
hanging out the side of my
mother like a loose
phosphorescent
tether.
How will I know
what to do, I wondered.
No one does, my mouth said.
Don’t touch me. I want to stand,
for once, on the bed
and flip the switch on the fan
that reverses the direction of
the blades myself
while the fan is moving.
It is a small switch, and I have a
small hand from which
an insignificant wind
is swinging in
the other direction now.
I feel like a beast in a clearing,
but I am a girl in heaven.
I passed out
as the wind picked up
and in the bay
as the tide
came in,
what a blow to mankind,
an automatic wind
to war, toward
war, untoward
toward war
took my breath
away with it.




*

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

My reaction is a pretty idiosyncratic one, but I haven't enjoyed a book as much as I enjoyed reading this one in a little while. Schiff's poems are long and learned, and you have to engage in this seemingly contradictory tasks, of letting your mind drift where she wants to take you in her expansive, drifting survey of the world, which can include the personal and the world-historical, current events and mythology, etc, all spun together into these gleefully weird confections. She's not above connecting things across lines or pausing the action to get off a striking observation that the next line will undo or deepen.

Even though it's true that these poems are "difficult," they are also really fun, and funny. The long poem about ants, ending after 6 pages of speculation with the opportunity to just smash them with a brick and be done with them stuck with me and keeps me engaged now, thinking about it. Good stuff.

[Ella Dixon · Rating 2 out of 5]

i have a hard time with poetry and this is no exception. it was especially hard to read because it was sometimes about motherhood and i #cantrelate.
a friend let me borrow this because robyn was his professor and apparently was a tough critic. i’m always interested in what iowa workshops consider success stories because i so rarely agree.
moral of the story is that i didn’t get it and i’ll be sticking to short form comedic poetry written by women i would like to hang out with (read: cat cohen) instead. this is definitely my laziest review yet but i also felt like this book was lazily written. i like when a poetry collection has a little more going on throughout and the only common thread i could really discern was like…worms? i hate worms.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Long, meandering poems that lose momentum and leave the reader wondering what the poem is actually about...

from Dyed Carnations: "I used to wash my hands and daydream. / I dreamed of myself and washed / my hands of everything. Easy math."

from H1N1: "God knows how our neighbors manage to breathe. / No one is allowed / to touch me // for infection is a hazard of mercy / I will not transmit"

from Siren Test: "When a boy cries / wolf a wolf cries boy. The wood / behind my house only go back a few feet / and are lit by a commuter / train. Today is overcast but the siren churned / its test, nevertheless."

[Dan Cassino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Out of AE Stallings, and looking for more contemporary poetry in a similar vein, I happened on a review of Schiff’s new book, and tried this one out.
It’s not as formally constrained as Stallings or some of my other favorite poets, but Schiff does a wonderful job of mixing the quotidian (a bad experience at an outdoor production that you should leave at intermission but don’t, a dispute over property lines) with classical and evocative imagery.
Well worth it, and I’m looking forward to going through the rest of her corpus.

[Noodle’s Book Nook · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I as a poet do not use a set pattern Robyn Schiff needs all of the awards for her dedication to that. This collection of poetry is not only beautiful but also masterfully created. I would recommend this to anyone who loves a flowery poem with lots of subtexts.

[Abby]

This poetry collection was very confusing to me - but maybe that's because I read it at 2 in the morning \_('-')_/

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

"There exists in nature
A wolf-kind of every species"

[Laurel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll be forever grateful I got to study under Schiff in college. I learned more from one class with her than in whole years of my college education.

[Navya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Half of it made me think I was having a good trip, half of it made me think I was having a stroke

[Kelsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lord I love Schiff's weird, wild poems, but I'm a short poem girlie and these poems are so long! A poem over 2 pages simply can't hold my attention. This is probably a "me" problem.

[Rachel Randolph]

Robyn Schiff knows how to write a KILLER along poem. The opening poem of the collection was my favorite.

[Jane Wantland · Rating 3 out of 5]

I get it but I also think I haven’t lived enough and I don’t get it

[Allison Talbot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intense poems that expand and contract in amazing ways. They skillfully play with sonic nonsense, then find their way back into a narrative.

[L · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just not for me. I did appreciate a few of the poems.

[Courtney Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this collection with its winding, interconnected themes and sharp turns of phrase. A perfect start to National Poetry Month.

[Ellison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Features a collection of non-rhyming poems, some of which stretch over a multiple of pages. Topics include deer hunting, flu season, a chair, flowers, food and others. Some swearing.

[Mills College Library]

811.6 S333p 2016

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

On track to be the best poetry I read this year. Schiff cycles through some motifs and has a terrific cadence. There is a nice oscillation between descriptive and introspective regardless of which thematic subject is at hand.

[c · Rating 5 out of 5]

eminently instructive.