Witch Wife

by Kiki Petrosino

The poems of Witch Wife are spells, obsessive incantations to exorcise or celebrate memory, to mourn the beloved dead, to conjure children or keep them at bay, to faithfully inhabit one’s given body. In sestinas, villanelles, hallucinogenic prose poems and free verse, Kiki Petrosino summons history’s ghosts-the ancestors that reside in her blood and craft-and sings them to life.

Genres: Poetry, Adult, Witches, Female Authors

71 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 20, 2017

About the author

Kiki Petrosino is the author of White Blood: a Lyric of Virginia (2020) and three other poetry books, all from Sarabande. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. Her memoir, Bright, is forthcoming from Sarabande in 2022. She directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia, where she is a Professor of Poetry. Petrosino is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Fellowship in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, the UNT Rilke Prize, & the Spalding Prize, among other honors.

Reviews

[H James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think of poetry like I do candles: A lot of it is plain white tapers—quiet, distinguished, giving off mellow light and a faint warmth that would have been valued in centuries past but is now just set decoration. Some of it is overly perfumed—maybe trusty lavender, maybe a crass Yankee Candle concoction, none of it likely to conjure a feeling deeper than nostalgia. Some of the old epics are not a single candle but a temple full of tapers—a thrumming, trance-inducing experience like Gilgamesh, which I was happy to let embrace me. But Witch Wife…

Witch Wife isn't a candle, it's a coffee can full of phosphorus, radiating with something too bright to see clearly but impossible to look away from. "Doubloon Oath" is music the likes of which I've never before seen on a page. "Jantar Manar" manifests a world the likes of which I didn't believe possible to construct in so few words. "Witch Wife" is a joyful, creepy, loving, morbid enigma the likes of which I simply didn't know existed. A handful of poems fizzled for me, but one out of every five or six rocked me back on my heels in wonder.

[Emily Pérez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the way this book plays with forms (notably the villanelle) and examines both womanhood and marriage. It is both incantatory and contemporary--one I will read again.

[mia !! · Rating 5 out of 5]

new fave poetry book <3

[Holly Walrath · Rating 5 out of 5]

Petrosino’s collection of poems is cunning in its use of rhyme and form, in a way which feels brisk, unforced, and pithy in the way structure should be. The author has a fantastic handle on language. The poems in this book are fresh and bright.
Some lines I enjoyed:
“Now / they come in the dark to hang their muzzles / over our fence lines. We seem to feel their breath / on our backs at night.”
“Do they know / about the botch / in my belly? I think / it’s a gel / where the white light / rots”
I particularly loved the use of form in “Maria” and the refrain of “I was twelve. I was twelve. I was twelve.” Haunting in triplicate.
There is an interesting exploration of the feminine with poems like “thigh gap” and “first girdle.” Which twist the familiar into the uncanny. There is also much discussion of the female body as othered and creatured. While this is not a new topic, I never tire of reading new takes on it. And the humor in approaching this topic is interesting too, as in “Let me tell you people something”
A book you’ll want to own in print so you can feel the weight of the words in your hands.

Updated for 2019 Elgin Award:
I read Petrosino’s book last year and fell in love with its overpowering language & luscious self-effacing humor. Witch Wife has managed to straddle the line between realism & genre in a way that’s frankly impressive. It was listed by the NYT as a best in poetry & is now in reprint due to its popularity. The book features eighteen villanelles, prose poems, a sestina, a ghazal, and a pantoum. It engages with the body, blackness, & speculative feminism in a way that I think is truly representative of what speculative poetry can be — and what walls it can knock down.

[Kate Alleman · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some great poems in here and each poem built on the previous, but it just didn't compare to Chen Chen so that colored my perspective.

[Jordan B · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I absolutely think Kiki Petrosino is a good poet and she is has a strong handle on her voice and form, none of these poems resonated with me in particular. I am interested to revisit later and see if I feel differently. Sometimes I think poetry more than fiction can strike you completely differently at different times. This time, I wasn't vibing as much as I thought I would, but I definitely think she has talent.

[Ceallaigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorites were “Lament”, “The Child Was in the Woods”, and “Nursery” and I also loved “Self-Portrait” and “Let Me Tell You People Something”. What Petrosino does with the English language is pure, pure magic.

[jada alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent!!!!!!!!!!!


// read for day 2 of the sealey challenge

[Dana Amico · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this because the cover and binding is so beautiful, and because I usually like poetry that is more obscure, or plays with words and sounds. However, I unfortunately did not enjoy this for exactly those reasons - the poems were too obscure to the point of not being able to comprehend many of the ideas or stylistic choices here, and although there were moments of beautiful word play and manipulation, some of it didn’t work for me. I flagged a few poems I liked: “Elegy,” “Whole 30,” and “Prophecy.”

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful poems even if I didn't really get them.

[Mia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nocturne

I fill my plate with rain. I fill my belly.
I fill a T-shirt with shells & count them on the floor of my cabin.
At night, I drink juice from a moon-colored mug.
I feed the lamp & wrap my hair in a scarf.

What good am I doing? The ocean whines from bed.
I take my pills. I bury watermelon seeds.
The pills & the seeds move past each other in the dark.
Who blesses them?

My regrets slither up from the porch.
They swell like shreds of orange pulp in my mouth.
It’s true that I love & that I do not love.
I fill myself with my regrets & begin to speak.


DOUBLOON OATH

By dead gal or stove bones
by rainbow or red bird
red bird or cracked spine
by silk wrap or jaw jaw
by cold bodice, blush wing
tick tick or sunk ship
by tipped arrow, glass bite
by weird catch or take that
by chopped mountain, slick house
boatneck or gloss hog
striped awning, gold lawn
by what’s that or so much
without me or full prof
full prof or nunchucks
blood orange, brain gob
time kill or toy star
by black doll or briar thorn
beg beg or gewgaw
by sweetmeat, or gunlock
or old maid or dreadnought
by weakness or whitecap
or grief-bacon, worksong
by fieldwork or field mix
slagged field or steel kilt
by bone-bruise or kneesock
I get my gift.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems invoking ancestors, spells, and obsessions.

from Whole 30: "After a winter of gluttony & grief / I'm back on plan for good this time. / I've ballooned to a specific kind of ugly // the kind you hope to hide / with body spray. But it gets worse / after a winter of gluttony & grief."

from First Girdle: "For the glob of a girl who feeds like a grub. For her teeming belly-apron. For her frowning navel, sunk like a moon in the night-night lake."

from Political Poem: The country is not what it was. I miss the arc of / green fireworks in spring & the moral / bellies of lake trout rolled in flour. This universe is / so dry, star-sharp. Each day, my arms grow long but / never reach the freedom shore."

[Skye · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of poems was wonderfully dark and poignant. I loved the emotions that it inspired within me throughout. I also felt like a whole heap of it went over my head, but I often feel that way woth poetry until I've read it half a thousand times...

This poetry was wonderfully dark and engagingly written. I struggled to put it aside. And, even as I'm writing this review days after finishing it... I still get those strong emotions rushing through me.

One of my favourite things about poetry is that you can find something new with every new reading. Some of these poems I read multiple times and understood something new each and every time.

[Moni · Rating 4 out of 5]

April was national poetry month, and my local library had a stand where the workers selected their choice of poem books to display. So I chose a book by its cover, like anyone does. I rarely read poetry, a lot of these poems didn’t all make sense to me. Which is fine and expected. I enjoyed the read and the ones that stood out are N/ought, Gräpple, Nursery and Elegy. It was an interesting read overall

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written like a spell in these strange repetitive pantoum-like or villanelle? poems in these forest-y worlds where animals and people are transforming back and forth, but then also in beautiful Italian landscapes of romance and heartbreak? It manages to be focused in terms of themes of the collection around the witch and the wife as relational ways of being in the world, but also wide-ranging in terms of setting and landscapes.

[Nicola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous. I devoured this collection of poems on a long bus ride. Beautiful, sometimes melancholy ruminations on what it means to be a woman and the conflicting feelings of whether to become a mother. Especially loved the pieces of surreal Italian scenery mixed in with stark, back-at-home reality. Going to read more poetry in 2019.

[Clover O'Mordha · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poems were really great and I loved the various explorations of gender and nature here. However, the endless vilanelles were kind of a miss for me. Vilanelles are hard to write, and even harder to write well. There were a few that were really amazing, but most were ok. But overall, I it's worth the read!

[L]

"Stuffed thy brain with blooms of blight:
algae, wool. You're lichen-white."
- 'Self-Portrait', pg.11

"I keep time-travelling back to the noon of my birth."
- 'Contagion', pg. 16

"My sins hummed between us
a ravel of birds, a lightening smell.
She'd appear in the break before sleep"
- 'Maria', pg. 17

[Kate DeLay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excessively original within such traditional forms. I liked how much it was doing with language and uncertainty. Rated 5 stars because I think it’s excellent even if I don’t personally connect as much to the style. I just think it’s a good way to push outside the typical zone of contemporary poetry. Glad I was assigned to read it.

[Amy ☁️ (tinycl0ud) · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems are otherworldly and often hypnotic. I was delighted by how many of them were villanelles. It’s a challenging form (to me) but the poet manages to do something subtle and surprising with many of them.

My favourites:
• ‘Maria’
• ‘I Married a Horseman’
• ‘The Child Was in the Woods’ (!! this one!!)

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first time reading Kiki Petrosino, but it won't be my last. I'm so in love with her style, which blends the traditional and modern in both content and style in a way that I find irresistible. A new favourite and one I would wholeheartedly recommend.

[Serge ♆ Neptune · Rating 4 out of 5]

A spellbinding collection with lots of villanelles in it. Unusual style but charming. Loved it!

Favourites: Self-Portrait, This is How we Feed the Animals, Ghosts, Witch Wife, Vigil, Jantar Mantar.

[Natasha Cobb · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite was:

Afterlife
My exes shall rise up from their Mazdas
& adorn themselves in denim.
I'll take their hands & we'll wander
among the silver asparagus.
Though all our present, it seems to each that I'm walking with him only.
One brings me five white roses again
petals curling in soft paper.
Another comes with a mixtape & drawings:
heart, suitcase, shape of his country.
We'll sit at the stone table & eat
from the same jar of strawberries & mint.
Each will tell about his wife. The golden hikes
they take after lunch with their dogs.
I'll show them my books & the healed mark
over my ribcage.
We'll enter the cottage where our babies sleep
forever in their small beds.
I'll hum to them in many voices until just
one brightness occurs.
Then I'll go alone to the curve of the lake
to see what will jump for me.

[S.R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oooooh this is good stuff. I especially like it formally: the pantoum "Twenty One" punched me in the gut, and her use of villanelles to structure the book is, I think, well handled. Yasssss!

[Evelyn Mcmanis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty meh. The best poem by far is the title poem, I really like the contrasting themes of Easter, death, rebirth, and suburban banality.

[Stephen Byrne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, very unusual gorgeous style of writing. Really loved this book.

[Mary Lynn HR · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poetry.
I enjoyed the final few.

[The Book Girl · Rating 4 out of 5]

loved this book. Review to come.

[Leonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice collection of poems with a few prose poems and many villanelles. I liked it, maybe because i especially like villanelles

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not for me.