There Is Only One Ghost in the World

by Sophie Klahr, Corey Zeller

There Is Only One Ghost in the World follows the fragmented meditations of a multilayered voice, an intimate witness to our times that delicately and bluntly reveals the best and the worst in all of us. It is a kaleidoscopic investigation into the loneliness of modern American life as well as family relationships, exploring the truths and lies that families tell one another, and why, with empathy, sorrow, and humility. We travel from the oil-slicked beaches of California and the alleys of New Orleans to the steps of the Capitol. the raw nerves of gender and identity. the lessons of heartbreak. true myths, fake news, and old rumors. the legacies of art and incisors of seasons. Incompletable Venn diagrams, sibling porn stars, addiction and climate change, shootings and stolen x-rays, the lyrics of disco and the taxonomy of slot machines, steel monoliths and 99-cent stores, last meals and unearthed mummies. There Is Only One Ghost in the World is a book about what happened just before you woke up, and what happened just after. And what happened next.
 

Genres: Poetry

124 pages, Paperback

Published October 17, 2023

About the author

Sophie Klahr is the author of Two Open Doors in a Field (Backwaters Press), Meet Me Here at Dawn (YesYes Books) and ______ Versus Recovery (Pilot Books). She is the co-author of There is Only One Ghost in the World (Fiction Collective 2, 2023), winner of the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest, alongside Corey Zeller. Her poetry appears in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and other publications.

Reviews

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you asked me the genre of this book, I’m not sure I could give you a concrete answer. It seems unable to be boxed in, despite the blocked prose poetry. These collaborative page-long pieces are semi-autobiographical, magical, dipping into daydreams, worrying about the world, traveling back in time, reflecting and forgetting and rebuilding and growing. Not memoir, not a novel, not a poetry collection. The same body is occupied despite the two writers, who both seem to be channeling something larger than themselves. Like two minds inside of a solo ghost, floating around the globe, one fractured catastrophe at a time.