If Some God Shakes Your House

by Jennifer Franklin

Jennifer Franklin reimagines an Antigone for our times in her third collection, If Some God Shakes Your House , where filial devotion and ossified roles of gendered labor become the engine of her defiance. Franklin’s Antigone is ferocious, feeling, and unafraid of the consequences of speaking the truth to power about the political atrocities she has witnessed and personal traumas she has withstood. With a sensitivity that equally elevates the quotidian and the classical, and an attention that moves from the ancient ruins of Pompeii to the right of bodily autonomy and agency stripped away by our own Supreme Court, Franklin reveals the high stakes of our moment where “the one who does the judging judges things all wrong.” Franklin’s Antigone has embraced the sacrifice of self for something greater—a dual devotion to her disabled daughter and to her art. “For twenty years, I have been disappearing,” she writes in the book’s final poem, yet she continues to sing.

Genres: Poetry

119 pages, Paperback

Published March 15, 2023

Reviews

[Allison]

Holy Hell. Beautiful and painful poems. The first collection in a long time to make me weep.

[Courtney LeBlanc]

An exceptional collection of poetry that journeys through the poet's life - the chances lost, the decisions made, the repercussions that echo for years. With heartbreak and honesty, Jennifer Franklin walks the reader through a life filled with sorrow and loss, but also joy and hope. A must-read collection.

from May: "As doctors tried to stop my / vomiting and weight loss, my mother and my husband talked me out / of the abortion. Fear was their shared weapon—he threatened me, / she predicted he would stop loving me. I had the baby; he stopped / loving me anyway."

from As Antigone—: "I grew up confusing opinion / with oracle. She reminded me // all men are dangerous, each time / I left the house alone."

from Memento Mori: Colony Collapse: "I read the headlines—list of man-made horrors / I cannot itemize. Funeral after funeral of those who, / struggling to breathe, called out for their mothers."

[Ann Wallace]

“If Some God Shakes Your House” by Jennifer Franklin (Four Way Books, 2023). The control of women — their voices, their bodies, their actions — is age old and also urgently of this moment. But so is force of a woman’s voice and actions, of her protection of all she loves. Jennifer’s book is a master class in weaving together myth —via persona poems about in the voice of Antigone — and the all-to-real urgency of our present (& recurring, & continuing) moment in which women must fight for all that they hold dear. This astonishing collection is fierce and sorrowful, but also calming in its clarity and its firm and steady voice.

[Dayeton Tolle]

Franklin imagines and images Antigone as not a loyal daughter leading blind Oedipus into exile, but truly one of a woman locked in tragic fate and forced to survive based on defiance; a true martyr of “one who is of opposite opinion.”

Franklin asks all women in this meditation of what it means to be a woman in this world: at birth, are we (women) not all slated to the same fate as Antigone in our own ways?

[Carla]

Searing poems: a woman is pressured to continue a high risk pregnancy, and gives birth to a severely disabled child. The spouse leaves, the mother loves the child— a mythic fatalism. But Franklin’s poems rise above the personal to the poet’s identification with Antigone, Keats, and art.

[Sara Bramble]

Poignant collection of contemporary poems held together by artistic presentation of ideas in poems that refer to Antigone, the Trump era and memento mori poems.

[Tara Flint Taylor]

One of the most astounding collections of poetry.
Jennifer Franklin is a powerful poet and I am in awe of her.

[Aaron Caycedo-Kimura]

I ordered Jennifer Franklin’s If Some God Shakes Your House (Four Way Books) as soon as it became available. I read it right before leaving for a writing residency and brought it with me for the inspiration her work always provides. Four years ago, I was blown away by No Small Gift and have been looking forward to this new collection ever since. Through a series of lyrical “Antigone” poems, “Memento Mori” sonnets, and prose poems entitled with the months of the year, Franklin, takes a courageously honest look at her journey thus far, sharing with her readers the pain and difficulties she’s had to face. At times angry or outraged, and at times tender, she interweaves the personal and political skillfully, always creating beautiful art. I’m grateful for this author and her exceptional work. I give If Some God Shakes Your House my highest recommendation. It’s an intense, heart-wrenching, and sublime tour de force.