Lightning Falls in Love

by Laura Kasischke

In her stunning twelfth poetry collection, Lightning Falls in Love, Laura Kasischke makes magic with a complex alchemy of nostalgia and fire, birdwing and sorrow. In new poems that search the murky lake for news of the past, she evokes unsayable trauma and gleans possibility. This is poetry that is existential in scope but grounded in the body, surreal yet suburban, reaching for clarity just beyond the fog of the day-to-day. Kasischke has found an entirely new way to spin beauty and pull breath from that which must be dredged up and revived before it can be left behind.

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

First published September 21, 2021

About the author

Laura Kasischke is an American fiction writer and American poet with poetry awards and multiple well reviewed works of fiction. Her work has received the Juniper Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Prize, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers, and the Beatrice Hawley Award. She is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as several Pushcart Prizes.

Her novel The Life Before Her Eyes is the basis for the film of the same name, directed by Vadim Perelman, and starring Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood. Kasischke's work is particularly well-received in France, where she is widely read in translation. Her novel A moi pour toujours (Be Mine) was published by Christian Bourgois, and was a national best seller.

Kasischke attended the University of Michigan and Columbia University. She is also currently a Professor of English Language and of the Residential College at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She lives in Chelsea, Michigan, with her husband and son.

Reviews

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kasischke has been known and revered as an "image-maker," and this is certainly as it should be. But, even though she's published as many novels as collections of poetry, the poems have never before seemed to be structured as narratives. Yeah, there were often small stories imbedded in the poems or shaping the group of them (think of the brilliant and devastating "Space, in Chains"). But here it is the stories that seem to dominate; there are some poems where images just seem to fade away so the story can be told directly. I think it's fabulous that at this point in her writing life, Kasischke has tried to do something different.

The poems still often have that dark vision Kasischke is famous for. There are poems of abuse and assault, poems filled with fear and fragility. But the strong narrative changes things. Near the end of the book she assumes the oldest story in the Western world. Her poem is called "The odyssey."

She rowed her little boat
back home
to Ithaca, alone

And it becomes a poem about a woman aging. The changes in the body. The effort to come to terms with those changes. And then it becomes something else entirely --

a question occurs to her, just
as it occurs to us, and
no answer ever comes:

Where is the bard
who sings this song?

I love the short jerky lines and irregular stanzas that have given so much life to Kasischke's poems for a long time. More recently, I've loved the sound play that ties them all together -- the string of rhymes and half rhymes hidden inside the lines. In this book she is willing to accent some of that even more -- for instance, there is one poem that is even written in rhyming couplets!

And the very last poem in the book -- "A Prayer" -- is a celebration of her son and of the tentative fragile life they share in full knowledge

that everywhere we go--
that every day, like
this one, will
be like every other, having never

been never ending. So
thank you. And, oh--I
almost forgot to say: amen.

This is a new tone in Kasischke's poetry. I find it big and expansive, as well as being hard-earned.

[Shawn Aebi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Low key observations about the life around us; not so much the interactions or emotions but what remains after. Not so much contemplation as discovery.

[H.V. · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems just shimmer! Highly recommend.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 overall.

But "The Time Machine" is 5 stars. Beautifully done.

[Audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.75

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the poems in this collection still seem to be in the dredging phase of the creative process, gathering images from the depths of the subconscious to limn cryptic messages on the shore of consciousness. The patient and meticulous beachcomber will find plenty of objects of interest and value among the flotsam and jetsam.

Favorite Poems:
“An evil meal”
“Prayer”