Juice

by Renee Gladman

Poetry. African American Studies. Gladman wields an idiosyncratic skill with description and characters that has drawn praise and attention from her contemporaries. JUICE describes a world where seemingly minor obsessions and details (like the narrator's almost random preference for juice) can structure and develop an entire story, down to its tone and style. As her narrator puts "So far it has been sex and leaves that keep me alive."

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

63 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2000

About the author

Renee Gladman is an artist preoccupied with crossings, thresholds, and geographies as they play out at the intersections of writing, drawing and architecture. She is the author of numerous published works, including a cycle of novels about the city-state Ravicka and its inhabitants, the Ravickians—Event Factory (2010), The Ravickians (2011), Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge (2013), and Houses of Ravicka (2017)—all published by Dorothy. Her most recent books are My Lesbian Novel (2024) and a reprint of her 2008 book TOAF (both also from Dorothy). Recent essays and visual work have appeared in The Architectural Review, POETRY, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and e-flux, in addition to several artist monographs and exhibition catalogs. Gladman’s first solo exhibition of drawings, The Dreams of Sentences, opened in fall 2022 at Wesleyan University, followed by Narratives of Magnitude at Artists Space in New York City in spring 2023. She has been awarded fellowships and artist residencies from the Menil Drawing Institute, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, among others, and received a Windham-Campbell prize in fiction in 2021. She makes her home in New England.

Reviews

[Sentimental Surrealist · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that gobsmacked me, since it's rare I read anything that really stands apart from any sort of tradition. Sure, you've got flawed but compelling novels like Remainder that don't compare well to anything else out there, and you've also got masterpieces like Housekeeping that seem to draw more from the Bible than from fiction, but those are rarities among what I've read, and I've read more than a couple books. But not even those books hit me quite like Juice. It's like these four story-poems are set in the aftermath of a cataclysm, and Gladman felt like writing about the cataclysm's consequences and maybe a bit about its causes, but not about the Event itself. And it's not even in a Reservoir Dogs-type way where you know exactly what happened; it's more she decided to leak out only the details necessary to understanding her stories, and even those are given in a highly impressionistic style. The title story blatantly dances around whatever the hell happened, essentially reporting on the day before and the day after but not the day itself. I know I just called these story-poems, but that doesn't feel quite accurate. I don't think they have a name for what she's doing yet. But really, I don't think they even need one. Here's what matters: Gladman dunks you into her strange post-apocalyptic worlds, leaves you wandering around these blighted cities and wondering how things got to where they were. You might have to read it twice to even begin understanding it, but it's worth your second read. Hell, writing this review makes me want to go in for round three.

[Eugene · Rating 5 out of 5]

something unique in that it really is smack dab in the middle of poetry and fiction, in between how the two usually operate.

i asked a poet friend once what was the difference between prose and poetry. and he deadpanned: "linebreaks." well gladman doesn't have any, but one could easily see each sentence as a poetic line and the movement between them like the mysterious linguistic chasm/synapse that separates lines of poetry. and a particular type of poetry too, far from confessional, which is especially curious in how one meaning unit relates to another. ashbery without linebreaks.

on the other hand, there is a narrative progression and (though airy and abstract) a use of character. not exactly events but repetition and return and by these, development.

a short book but long enough. this isn't pejorative, just that, like poetry, such a crucibled output requires so much stamina from reader and writer. seemed the right length for it.

the end result is oddly depressive, as if you're detached, annihilated. as if language has ultimately risen between you and the world.

[Jacob Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three short passages from Juice:


*


About the body I know very little, though I am steadily trying to improve myself, in the way animals improve themselves by licking. I have always wanted to be sharp and clean. But this is not a story about me.


*


Long before the fresh apple crisis, my life had some form to it. I would wake in the mornings – I would perform something. For example, the day I tried, as one with acute passion might, to win one woman over but accidentally won another – that whole time I had been living like someone. Though I can’t remember his name. His model of optimism provided me with a certain geography that I inhabit in time of need. This time the need was surprising.


*


The poems I had written were failures, but dense ones. It seemed appropriate to think the person’s attempt at wholeness was a series of missteps, which if drawn across an afternoon might prove interesting to other people. I had a way of reminding my friends that we were all in pain, but a fruit tart kind of pain strangers can’t help but enjoy. That day I had, in a sense, gathered all my possessions and gone out onto the street with them.


*

[atito · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh my goodness!

[Stevie Faye · Rating 5 out of 5]

I opened to the first page to get a taste and see if I wanted to commit and then found myself in a feeding frenzy, devouring it. Do I understand anything I just read? Nope. Am I obsessed with it? Absolutely.

[Gabrielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Timeless, as in a book existing both in the full spectrum of time and also beyond it. A narrative in multiversal poetics? Delicious. I especially enjoyed the first section of the book, "Translation," as well as, "No Through Street".

"I never learned moderation in my thinking. I have damaged myself inexcusably." (pg. 40)

"A person so tired that she cannot learn puts too much relish on things." (pg. 56)

[Eileen]

i love the sparseness and simplicity of this collection. i especially love proportion surviving, which you can read for free on poetry foundation! i've probably read it over a dozen times now and there's something new there every time.

[Orion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly abstract and difficult to grasp at first, but slowly the narrative begins to take shape. I feel I would benefit from a second reading as many other reviewers have stated, or perhaps should have taken more time on my first one. The ending felt incredibly abrupt.

[Jared Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I think of him, no matter where I am, my heart starts to race. I have never learned moderation in my thinking. I have damaged myself inexcusably.

[Cary Stough · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly the best there is: imbrication of narrator and reader, every perspective is a world.

[zara ⭒❃ · Rating 4 out of 5]

dreamy, surreal, and unsettling

[Susanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

We read a piece of this book in a hybrid/experimental writing class I'm taking, and I picked up the book to read the rest. JUICE is a collection of four prose poems that read like dreamlike story/essay/writings. The Publishers Weekly review puts it best -- it reads "like an alien codex from a culture in one's own backyard."

I was going to try to say which piece I liked best -- "Translation," "Proportion Surviving," "No Through Street," or "First Sleep," but now I can't decide. Some of the lines are beautiful, some make you laugh, some sections are perplexing, but it is a fascinating little book, all the text in blocks that makes the reader question everything, like whether it is text, or what text is, and what daily life is compared to memories of daily life. And it is 63 pages, so if you're used to reading prose, you can easily read this book twice.

[Charlie Zoops · Rating 3 out of 5]

When reading “Juice” you can't help to feel you are encountering something very intimate. And what feels at first as a document of self discovery, leads itself to become a play on the essential idea of discovering, of wondering and reaching for meaning, without the necessity of achievement. Gladman's language is powerfully unique, for it pronounces itself conversationally, yet is still buoyant in its philosophical games and acts of deconstructing through time-jumbling and non-linear associations. Emotionally, this story brings you into its poetry, its softness, and its deliberate reassembling of its narrative, artfully enough to give back a reflection of how you can fit meaningfully within its spacing.

[Kathline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reads like a parable, or a daydream, but with notes of a deeper exploration of one’s space (home). It seemed she was telling a story of creative work through a metaphorical exploration of inhabited space. For instance, early on in the story she follows a passage about loving her town with the thought “imagine coming home to a one-hundred-mile expanse of beauty that you have always thought of as yourself, and finding on that day that it exists without you.” To me, this evokes the solitary process of the writer, and the mining of the interior world that must be traveled to in creation.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the most unusual books I have ever read. The short stories are thought provoking and, quite frankly, weird. It made for a unique reading experience. Though the book is short, it will remain in your mind for days.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Postmodernism. Let's be honest. I don't get it. But the imagery can be so lush and it just begs you to search deeper within it and within yourself. At least for once I can't tag along the plot.

[Bryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title piece in this work is pretty awesome.