Slide To Unlock

by Julie E. Bloemeke

In Slide to Unlock , Julie E. Bloemeke investigates how modern technology redirects our erotic and familial lives, including phones that open with the swipe of a finger and text messages that move the speaker toward startling self-discovery--the "bright trick of letters" that can ignite memory and desire. Each poem explores the sacred and sacrilege within the large and small worlds we navigate--the chimeric ache of a Georgia thunderstorm, the "unseen union" in a Monet painting, a girlhood bedroom in Toledo, a letter secreted in a Paris bookshop--to reveal how digital language and communication, while designed to create intimacy, can leave us adrift. With a lush, hypnotic writing style at once precise and liquid, romantic and ruthless, Bloemeke presents a topography of all the possible ways to carry another person--to "build /the membrane / body ourselves / into each other"--to unlock the lost art of face-to-face connection, and to free ourselves to be "so so bad in how [we] want." PRAISE FOR SLIDE TO UNLOCK "Is it possible for a lyric poet to bring the rawest complications of the adult heart, an orchestra-conductor's authority of syntax, a pristinely liberating imagination, and a virtual mixtape's range of voices, reference, and places together into a single, unified, seemingly narrative, utterly dazzling whole? Julie E. Bloemeke's Slide to Unlock it is." - Jane Hirshfield "Julie E. Bloemeke's Slide to Unlock is a kind of philosophical love poetry, and in it, the poet locates in the body the satisfactions of the 'There is no place but here, / submerged, the flower of me, / the flower of you, both coded to open, / but brought instead to salt, / converted to everlasting.' Lines like these spiral and unwind in Bloemeke's opus. This is a lovely book." - Jericho Brown, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry --- Julie E. Bloemeke received her MFA through the Bennington Writing Seminars and an MA from the University of South Carolina. She has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and also in residency at the Bowers House Literary Center. Her poems have been widely anthologized and appeared in numerous literary journals including Gulf Coast , Prairie Schooner , Poet Lore , and others. Her ekphrastic work has been published and showcased in collaborations with the Toledo Museum of Art and Phoenix Museum of Art. A freelance writer, editor, and guest lecturer, her interviews have recently appeared in The AWP Writer's Chronicle and in Poetry International . Slide to Unlock was a finalist and semi-finalist for multiple book prizes including the May Swenson Poetry Prize in 2016. It is her first full-length poetry collection.

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

Published March 12, 2020

Reviews

[Miah Jeffra · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is so much precision in this poetry collection, and yet it reminds us not to get too tied into any sort of precision of life. In fact, one of the opening conceits of Bloemeke's book is "We are undone / by the promise of resolution." The book accomplishes a lot in its pages: muses on communication and digital communication, squarely regarding them both as technologies—which is important for understanding Bloemeke's meditations. Whether in carefully metered form, ekphrasis (one after O'Keeffe's "Black Place" is particularly excellent), or playful free form (as in "Letters on the Air," another favorite), Bloemeke centers lack in dialectic with communication ("Think of all those waves / that cracked the shore without us"). However, the poet doesn't leave us empty, at all. She insists that "Maybe we justify the text," no matter its effect. Ultimately, there is no resolution—Bloemeke seems to warn us about that idea—but an understanding of the necessity of absence ("I leave the years of apology"). This book is beautiful. I expect nothing less from the Sibling Rivalry cadre.

[Marc Fitten · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a quality to this book that I love. It's the feeling of something meaningful to the heart but always just beyond reach. To read it is to understand the soulful longing of Tantalus. Sure -- it's about longing for love too, but it's more than that.

I finished it earlier this year and it's taken me a while to write this because I couldn't remember exactly what it was that I was reacting to, and then I remembered the Portuguese word that had escaped me - Saudade.

This is a collection about Saudade. It's a Fado, but it's a Fado for 2020, which means it speaks "for anyone left on hold."

A great collection!

[Shawnte Orion · Rating 5 out of 5]

A debut collection worth a decade of wait. Bloemeke’s poems flaunt technique and intimacy, as they dizzy themselves in a whirlwind of connections maintained through cellular devices, hidden envelopes and ultimately between art and memory. This book is not rushed wine.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

God, how gorgeous and necessary. This book is so beautiful and sensually written. Just read it!

[Alice Friman]

Ah, when a woman reaches a certain age.... And here it is, luxuriously sensual, delicious, more than a bit sad and nostalgic for what was and what never was and what never could be except what's carried in the mind. And that is all of it. One devours these poems. Such a rich and honest book by a new and rising star.

--Alice Friman

[Sandell Morse · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm reading a couple of poems at a time in Slide to Unlock. Here's my feeling. My whole body opens to each poem. I feel a sense of calm and joy, and almost always an "ah ha." I fall down into each poem's rhythm. I love each word. I'm not a poet. I'm not a critic. All I know is that I love this book.