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Tips For Domestic Travel
In these lucid and intriguing elegies, at the cold heart of calamity, there is a calm. This calm, a kind of wisdom, does not so much console as teach us that in the face of the tragic one cannot help, at least for some time, to remain inconsolable. You will find, in spite of what I have just said, that these poems are funny and humane, sharpened by Saunier’s razor-edged wit. She tunes these poems with a keen ear and perfected pitch for the music of the American language. This is a breathtaking and stunning debut.
--Eric Pankey, author of The Pear As One Example
In Tips for Domestic Travel, Hayden Saunier invites us to live deeply in the moment even as we stand apart from it and puzzle over it. Saunier’s poetry does not turn away from the horrors of the world, nor from its joys. Tips for Domestic Travel, like any remarkable book, offers good company for the long distances we must travel. It helps us to face what must be faced.
-- Christopher Bursk, author of The First Inhabitants in Arcadia
Poet Muriel Rukeyser famously wrote “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” Dear Ms. Rukeyser, a luminously lucid female has done just that. In this forthright, slyly inventive collection Hayden Saunier cleaves our world in twain like a grapefruit. Her clear-eyed poems praise what is, has been and will be. They cut to the startling heart of mortality, where loss and delight, humor and dolor are inextricable, where “…destruction beats creation/in a footrace every day.”
--Amy Gerstler, author of Ghost Girl and Medicine
--Eric Pankey, author of The Pear As One Example
In Tips for Domestic Travel, Hayden Saunier invites us to live deeply in the moment even as we stand apart from it and puzzle over it. Saunier’s poetry does not turn away from the horrors of the world, nor from its joys. Tips for Domestic Travel, like any remarkable book, offers good company for the long distances we must travel. It helps us to face what must be faced.
-- Christopher Bursk, author of The First Inhabitants in Arcadia
Poet Muriel Rukeyser famously wrote “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” Dear Ms. Rukeyser, a luminously lucid female has done just that. In this forthright, slyly inventive collection Hayden Saunier cleaves our world in twain like a grapefruit. Her clear-eyed poems praise what is, has been and will be. They cut to the startling heart of mortality, where loss and delight, humor and dolor are inextricable, where “…destruction beats creation/in a footrace every day.”
--Amy Gerstler, author of Ghost Girl and Medicine
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 20, 2023
#TheSealeyChallenge--Day 19, Book 19
Another absolutely wonderful collection of poems, starting with the first poem, which has the same title as the book. It is a great poem, and a great set-up for the rest of the book.
The book is divided into 4 sections. Most poems are free verse, but there are a number of non-traditional sonnets plus a villanelle (yea!). There are nods to Egyptian mythology, men who are no-shows in a variety of ways, and books, films, and plays. For me, I felt a connection to a group of other poems, which are poems concerning the speaker's dead mother and death in general.
While is some humor in this book, there is also anger, sadness, doubt, hope, regret, and lots of other emotions. This tracks, as this collection is about everyday life as well as a few dips into less conventional territory. I loved that the poems veered in this way.
My favorite poems: Flip Doll: Red Riding Hood, Waking, Beach, Among My Father's Stories, The Ship of Grief Returns to Shore, Work in Progress, 21st Century Options, Night Crawlers, Storm, and After, and Last Will.
There are so many beautiful lines, strong images, fun allusions, interesting metaphors, and little surprises, but here are a few of my favorite bits:
"I'm sitting in between a dead girl and a prostitute."
--Day Players in the Makeup Trailer
"We're trying to leave our bodies
while we're still alive."
--Why I Practice Yoga
"The men in their almost men's bodies . . . "
--Crossing
"Each death will
redefine you."
--Night: Awaiting News
" . . . her face
is a new moon in a tadpole sky."
--Rain-Filled Rut
"The night before the war began, my husband
found a wristwatch in the garden."
--Watch in the Garden
Love this book! Highly recommend.
Another absolutely wonderful collection of poems, starting with the first poem, which has the same title as the book. It is a great poem, and a great set-up for the rest of the book.
The book is divided into 4 sections. Most poems are free verse, but there are a number of non-traditional sonnets plus a villanelle (yea!). There are nods to Egyptian mythology, men who are no-shows in a variety of ways, and books, films, and plays. For me, I felt a connection to a group of other poems, which are poems concerning the speaker's dead mother and death in general.
While is some humor in this book, there is also anger, sadness, doubt, hope, regret, and lots of other emotions. This tracks, as this collection is about everyday life as well as a few dips into less conventional territory. I loved that the poems veered in this way.
My favorite poems: Flip Doll: Red Riding Hood, Waking, Beach, Among My Father's Stories, The Ship of Grief Returns to Shore, Work in Progress, 21st Century Options, Night Crawlers, Storm, and After, and Last Will.
There are so many beautiful lines, strong images, fun allusions, interesting metaphors, and little surprises, but here are a few of my favorite bits:
"I'm sitting in between a dead girl and a prostitute."
--Day Players in the Makeup Trailer
"We're trying to leave our bodies
while we're still alive."
--Why I Practice Yoga
"The men in their almost men's bodies . . . "
--Crossing
"Each death will
redefine you."
--Night: Awaiting News
" . . . her face
is a new moon in a tadpole sky."
--Rain-Filled Rut
"The night before the war began, my husband
found a wristwatch in the garden."
--Watch in the Garden
Love this book! Highly recommend.
June 15, 2020
Simply a lovely book with tender moments buried in the lines.
June 16, 2020
I enjoyed the inventive forms used by this poet.
January 11, 2010
In the title poem of Tips for Domestic Travel, Hayden Saunier tells us:
If you walk up, weeping, to an airline counter
one hour before flight and three days after
elevated warnings of terrorist attacks,
you should expect the body search
of a lifetime, even if you aren’t wearing
an underwire bra...
That is where we begin. Saunier takes us home where we use a bandsaw to do battle with a Smithfield ham, prepare for a road trip to an unknown sea town where a dearly beloved will nurse a tumor, and where death patiently reads The New York Times. Tips for Domestic Travel is an elegy, but it’s also a guide for navigating the domestic lands of the childhood home, the body, and the objects that remain.
Hayden Saunier's poetry has appeared in 5 A.M.,Beloit Poetry Journal, Mad Poets Review, Margie, Nimrod, Philadelphia Stories, Drunken Boat and Rattle, among others. She is the 2005 winner of the Robert Fraser Poetry Award, a Bucks County Poet Laureate and a Pushcart Prize nominee. An actress and voice-over artist, her film and television credits include The Sixth Sense, Philadelphia Diary and Hack. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia and holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her debut collection of poems, Tips For Domestic Travel, was a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award.
If you walk up, weeping, to an airline counter
one hour before flight and three days after
elevated warnings of terrorist attacks,
you should expect the body search
of a lifetime, even if you aren’t wearing
an underwire bra...
That is where we begin. Saunier takes us home where we use a bandsaw to do battle with a Smithfield ham, prepare for a road trip to an unknown sea town where a dearly beloved will nurse a tumor, and where death patiently reads The New York Times. Tips for Domestic Travel is an elegy, but it’s also a guide for navigating the domestic lands of the childhood home, the body, and the objects that remain.
Hayden Saunier's poetry has appeared in 5 A.M.,Beloit Poetry Journal, Mad Poets Review, Margie, Nimrod, Philadelphia Stories, Drunken Boat and Rattle, among others. She is the 2005 winner of the Robert Fraser Poetry Award, a Bucks County Poet Laureate and a Pushcart Prize nominee. An actress and voice-over artist, her film and television credits include The Sixth Sense, Philadelphia Diary and Hack. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia and holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her debut collection of poems, Tips For Domestic Travel, was a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award.
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December 26, 2009Clear, intelligent and compassionate poetry. I highly recommend it to any reader of poetry who has experienced loss, parenting, and living in community.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews