The Year of the Femme

by Cassie Donish

“At the edge of a field a thought waits,” writes Cassie Donish, in her collection that explores the conflicting diplomacies of body and thought while stranding us in a field, in a hospital, on a shoreline. These are poems that assess and dwell in a sensual, fantastically queer mode. Here is a voice slowed by an erotics suffused with pain, quickened by discovery. In masterful long poems and refracted lyrics, Donish flips the coin of subjectivity; different and potentially dangerous faces are revealed in turn. With lyricism as generous as it is exact, Donish tunes her writing as much to the colors, textures, and rhythms of daily life as to what violates daily life—what changes it from within and without.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Queer

92 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2019

About the author

Cassie Donish is a queer Jewish poet and writer, author of the full-length poetry collections The Year of the Femme (University of Iowa Press, 2019), chosen by Brenda Shaughnessy as winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, and Beautyberry (Slope Editions, 2018). Donish's nonfiction chapbook On the Mezzanine (Gold Line Press, 2019) was chosen by Maggie Nelson as winner of the Gold Line Press Chapbook Competition. An interdisciplinary thinker, geographer, and educator, Donish's writing has appeared in Best New Poets, The Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, jubilat, Kenyon Review, Tupelo Quarterly, VICE, and elsewhere. Donish earned an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and currently teaches and writes at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Year of The Femme (2019) is a mindful and reflective collection of poetry that evokes and celebrates the feminine spirit. The poet, Cassie Donish is the recipient of the Iowa Poetry prize (2018) and this is her second collection following her poetry debut: Beautyberry (2018). Some of the poems contained in "Femme" have been previously published.

The memory of “open water” and “open sky” are reoccurring themes with earth, air, shoreline beaches, with many other natural elements and nature. There are several themes of observation and situations revealed in free style and alternative verse. “The Tower” is a powerful and alarming piece that may suggest an accident or suicide? An unnamed individual is found at the bottom of the ocean, Donish writes of “twisting herself into a blue/green rope”—a rope which was thrown down to save this person who was “willed” to climb up and implored to “please recover”. Haunted by image endings: “I repeat myself over and over/when time stops, each cell in my body will unlock/Each cell contains the same image: a face/The mount gapes open, but there is no sound. Nothing to defend.”
Without actually saying so, there seemed to be a thread of anxiety or mental anguish, lack of memory that occurred both before and after “The Tower” as well as the likelihood of psychiatric hospitalization: hospital technical staff, the waiting room, the largest hospital in an unnamed state. There was no mention of injury, accident; illness etc.
Attraction and desire take flight in several poems with only slight hints at lesbian love and physical lovemaking. We don’t really have enough details to fully understand “she” or unnamed events as Donish reveals a “mystery of thought” (and observation). Regarding her lover, Donish beckons her to follow her into Oregon, Washington and California.

“The Year of The Femme” was the closing poem beginning with swimming on a slow moving river, which turns into a meditative journey of awareness surrounded by the sheer force of the sea. Driftwood and sand dollars are perhaps symbolic of a gentle way of life enjoyed fully with her lover. “I’m in a neighborhood of mirrors, adolescent flowers, and the sound of footsteps. The question is how to travel, to cross to you.” In the spring, life begins fresh and anew in this thoroughly captivating collection of discovery, love and acceptance. ** With appreciation to the University of Iowa Press via NetGalley for providing a DDC for the purpose of review.

[blue · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to love this so bad, my mind didn't want to though. This poetry collection is about body and gender and I appreciate that, we don't see a lot of it out there. I both loved and loathed how this was written. It felt like I was given 5 different pieces of string and each one pulled me in a different direction. Which would be the point Cassie is trying to portray but as a reader, it's especially confusing not to know.

I liked Tenderness more than the others because it had an element of subliminal darkness even with its simplicity. What I didn't particularly like was that a lot of them had a love element because it felt like that took the focus off what the poem was trying to portray and display to us.

I generally feel deep gratitude for this book because I know that some people feel like this; it is confusing and not easy.

-I received a copy of this arc from Netgally in exchange for an honest review

[Alja Katuin · Rating 1 out of 5]

It took me no more than 20 minutes to read through this.. mess.
There were a total of 2 poems that I was able to read fully, without thinking about it making no sense. Maybe it had to do with the funky format that the entire thing had, or I don’t know.. I just.. I couldn’t.

[Karla Strand · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, Cassie Donish’s (@CassieDonish) collection The Year of the Femme includes long, vivid poems that feel like wandering down a forest path surrounded by a gentle, crisp breeze and the smell of change in the air. Queerness abounds and I felt as though Donish was in my own head pondering desire, sexuality, gender, autonomy, loneliness, and hope. Each poem stands alone in its self-reflection and sincerity and yet the whole is woven together seamlessly. This is a collection that captures the thoughts and emotions of new as well as worn love, our explorations of the body and embodiment, and the questions we leave unanswered.

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Year of the Femme by Cassie Donish is a 2018 Iowa Poetry Prize-winning collection. Donish holds a BA in English and comparative religions from the University of Washington, and an MA in human geography from the University of Oregon. She currently teaches classes at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where she's pursuing a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing.

The collection opens with "Portrait of a Woman, Mid-Fall." A woman alone thinks of life and dreams while at the same time autumn is in view out the window. There seems to be a trap between security -- man or a dog, happiness or misery. There is a binary world that restricts dreams and time that limits choices. The yellow leaves dance on the wind while the red leaves crunch as they are crushed underfoot. Every day the number of leaves on the trees decrease and the number on the ground increase -- like discarded dreams. The woman wishes she can stop the leaves from changing merely because she knows she cannot. One thing cannot exist without its opposite.

Arrival is not a rival of departure
The two have to work together to make anything happen
All the clocks move together through time

Donish uses language and creates stunning images. Poems in the second section combine memories and impressions:

Daylight glinting off dimes in the grass
Daylight, and our teeth don’t feel
different yet

Daylight on top of the city, on top
of the lake
Daylight through a sieve of fingers
Mimics the skyscrapers
"Meanwhile, in a Galaxy"

The final section, "The Year of the Femme," revisits the concept of the binary in two-part poems. The first part consists of prose poetry, complete sentences, and formed in a near perfect block. The other element of the verse is chaotic in the arrangement of phrases and line breaks. Each half compliments the other much like arrival and departure. A wonderful collection of poetry. Truly, one of the best in contemporary poetry.

Available April 1, 2019

[Dr. des. Siobhán · Rating 3 out of 5]

*I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for the free poetry collection.*

I am not sure how to rate the poetry collections. I loved half the poems and I don't know if I understood the other poems.

I liked the tone of the poems, the references to Virginia Wolf, T S Eliot, Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson and also the topics of the poems which were all very human. We don't need binarisms and fixed genders to be okay! Some poems were very beautiful, other parts of poems I didn't really get. But that might be me. In addition, the layout was quite weird: I don't think that my Kindle got the way were supposed to look on page right. It was all over the place, different lines started in one line, it was weird. Maybe it was on purpose but I just don't know.

Here are some quotes from some of the poems that somehow worked for me. Poetry is very personal, so make up your own mind:

"If he ever moves out, she'll think about getting a dog.
Being a woman means needing a little protection
She gets a little anxious when he travels
The dog will make her feel safe living alone"

"She notices that women are miserable and happy
She notices that some men are empty and try to make women empty
She notices that she makes a lot of generalizations'

"Is there a way to shed gender but admit to its effects"

"Today the leaves crack like glass,
they let the wind in
Today she has mixed feelings
About pronouns and also the snow"

3,5-4 Stars because maybe I didn't get all the poems.

[Qukatheg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book for free through NetGalley.

Astute observations captured in lyrical, almost stream-of-consciousness style poetry. Observations and visions of nature mingle with internal thoughts and feelings, making up a rich bouquet of connections. Nature and humanity, knowledge and belief, memories and dreams, love and life.

I think perhaps the poet's writing style fits the longer poems better, or at least the longer poems were the ones that stood out to me more. I especially liked Portrait of a Woman, Mid-Fall and Modern Weeds.
But the most striking of the bundle was the poem The Year of the Femme. To me it read as the fragmented/distilled memories of a youth spent trying to figure out gender, trying to find oneself. It had an appealing sense of nostalgia to it.

My copy seemed to be missing line breaks and page breaks in many places, though it being poetry I can't be sure that wasn't the intention. It made it hard to ascertain where one poem ended and another began though, resulting in a feeling of restlessness because there were no built-in natural stopping points to take a moment to reflect on what I was reading (which I often like to do when reading poetry).

On the whole I think this collection of poetry has immense value, highlighting queer experience as something beautiful, worth celebrating and deliberating on in the form of poetry.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Much of this book didn't sing for me. Not sure if the content is not meant for me, or if it's the poet's style that doesn't resonate with me, or both. I appreciated the repetition of lines and imagery in "Portrait of a Woman, Mid-Fall." The form of "The Year of the Femme" was interesting, with the block of text and the five lines full of breaks and space beneath the blocks. I was perplexed by the parenthetical remark on each page (except the final page) that didn't have a closing parenthesis. I suppose these are unfinished asides. The poem read better for me when I omitted the 5-lined bits and read only the text blocks.

I dug the opening of "Heat Waves": Hanging onto the edge/Of the pool, a rounded blue/I must've heard the weeping sometimes/Of my older sisters/Somewhere in that/Environment where/I came into a/Personality"

Favorite poems:
"Tenderness" -- the repetition and the unfinished lines are effective for this subject matter.

"A Surface of Needles" -- I like what appears to be an inner monologue.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Year of the Femme is a 2018 Iowa Poetry Prize winner. The reader shouldn’t blast through the collection. It’s obvious that Donish chose each and every word carefully. The result of doing so are stunning images throughout the collection. Even if you don’t particularly like poetry, but love words and their use, you should read this collection.

[Elijah Guerra · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems achieve a profound atmosphere that carries the reader into transfixing modes of seeing, feeling, and experiencing space and the body. Cassie Donish has an incredible ability to fuse stunning, haunting imagery with unforgettable narrative. These experimental and melodic lines are exactly what I search for in contemporary poetry.

[Stephanie Linnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this collection, but in the end I just thought it was ok. I'm not sure what it was, but I couldn't really get into it like I have in other more recent poetry I have read. Overall, I gave this 3/5 stars.

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tried to enjoy more but the poetry just wasn't for me.

[Donald Quist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterful.

[Sally Howell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a groundbreaking work by a bright young artist. I look forward to reading her books of poetry!

[Amy Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lush, beautiful and cinematic!

[Jeremy Mifsud · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Year of the Femme is exactly what I like about contemporary poetry. It’s just so damn pleasant to read. It starts out with a 20-page poem, “Portrait of a Woman, Mid-Fall”, which I absolutely loved. Donish’s language is skilful in these two stanzas:

“At the edge of a field a feeling of arrival awaits
Arrival is not a rival of departure
The two have to work together to make anything happen

All the clocks move together through time
In a flock of birds, some birds are a little behind
All the birds are held together by a principle of form” (p. 15)


Full Review on: https://poetrybyjeremy.wordpress.com/...

[Kala Godin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I understand that this poetry collection has won awards. However I am rating it at 1 star. Took me a total of about half an hour to read. And I honestly should have DNFed it halfway through.
I didn't enjoy it at all. A lot of the lines and the phrases didn't even particularly make sense with the line either above or below it. Which made it very confusing.
Now I do write poetry myself, so it's not a lack of interest in poetry. And I've read some really understanding and well written poetry collections. And I just don't think that this is one of them.
I wish I could have found myself relating to it, but due to the confusing nature of it, I couldn't even find myself understanding what a lot of the phrases or verses were even trying to suggest. There is a severe lack of punctuation where punctuation should be. I understand that punctuation in poetry can often be very subjective to the author themselves. But it almost seemed like there was little understanding of how to end a verse. Sometimes there was capitalizations for no reason in the middle of a sentence, without punctuation or proper line breaks for multiple pages.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. The initial section drew me in with its direct statements ("She is selfish because she wants what she wants") and, later in the collection, individual poems such as "The Leaf Mask" and "Insomnia" struck me as perfect gems of thought and feeling expressed in consistently surprising, compelling language. I wish more contemporary poetry collections were this well-balanced.

[Eline · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciated the themes of femininity and body, but the writing style was messy and disconnected in a way that worked against understanding the message. Also as Donish talks about gender she admits to using "a lot of generalizations", which she says is not wholly untrue, but come from resentment and socialization. I feel if you want to write a book dissecting gender, do it completely and tear down why and how it hurts people. This feels more like snarky parody with a girl needing a dog because now she's single and has no one to protect her. Maybe I didn't get what this storytellers view of women are miserable and happy was supposed to be, but it was boring to read about and added little new. I received a copy through NetGalley in exchange for a honest reivew.