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Entering the House of Awe
Poetry. "Readers familiar with Susanna Childress's Jagged with Love will recognize her distinctive voice in these poems: her nerve, her honest, quirky, irreverent, immediate and embodied yearning that rushes, wordy, right up to the ragged margins In this second collection, new formal approaches bring breath and space to the lines, even delicacy sometimes, but these fine poems move with no less urgency because they are compelled by her signature quest for truthfulness. This search refuses perfectionism and mere aestheticism, yet admits beauty en route, as Childress claims, There needs to be no right word / There needs to be a wide hole / a whole mouth / where the right word / isn't"--Julia Spicher Kasdorf.
- GenresPoetry
85 pages, Paperback
First published October 3, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 8, 2012
I married her.
She's the real deal.
Buy it and tell your friends.
Seriously though......Susanna writes in the tension between word and narrative. She's the only one I can think of who can get away with scouring the dictionary for words that fascinate her by their meaning and sound...and then just drop them in as she likes. She can do it because she is so playful. The 50 cent word doesn't smack like tokenage but as respect and revelry.
Lots of word poets end up leaving you in the dark scratching your head wishing you were part of the club. Not so with Susanna. You are welcomed in with enough narrative/character without it be reduced to a nice, flowery story.
Above all I lover her courage and moral compass. She believes in beautiful things while being honest about the pain that surrounds.
She's the real deal.
Buy it and tell your friends.
Seriously though......Susanna writes in the tension between word and narrative. She's the only one I can think of who can get away with scouring the dictionary for words that fascinate her by their meaning and sound...and then just drop them in as she likes. She can do it because she is so playful. The 50 cent word doesn't smack like tokenage but as respect and revelry.
Lots of word poets end up leaving you in the dark scratching your head wishing you were part of the club. Not so with Susanna. You are welcomed in with enough narrative/character without it be reduced to a nice, flowery story.
Above all I lover her courage and moral compass. She believes in beautiful things while being honest about the pain that surrounds.
July 2, 2014
Susanna Childress’s Entering the House of Awe is breathtaking collection of poetry, particularly in its evocation of vibrant unexpected language and its scope of material. She mines life (both her own and others’) for fragments of paradoxical imagery, some of which she spins into full narrative elicitations and others of which she weaves with art, family history, and the words of the mystics. There is a poem about loving someone with depression, a poem about working in a home for abused kids, poems about a father’s declining health, but even as I write out this list of subjects, I’m aware that I’m reducing the poems to their surface topic, and they go so, so much deeper, seeming to reach out in every direction. Childress prefers long teeming lines and poems that spill out over the page, yet her craft is deft and spacing choices deliberate.
As a narrative poet, I was drawn more to poems like “The Wry World Shakes Its Head” and “Torn,” the latter of which took my breath away in its nonlinear revelations of fear and secrets. The poem “Fetching” explores family history in nine parts, and its beautiful in its search for truth and love. I also think I’ll return to her more lyrical poems again because they are less accessible and tap into something beyond story.
While some of these poems were definitely over my head and a little too dense for my taste, I overall thoroughly appreciated this collection.
More than anything, though, Childress clearly loves words. I’ve started a new practice of jotting down any words that I don’t fully know when they appear in a poem. After reading Entering the House of Awe, I had a cacophony of words to look up, to repeat out loud, to savor.
As a narrative poet, I was drawn more to poems like “The Wry World Shakes Its Head” and “Torn,” the latter of which took my breath away in its nonlinear revelations of fear and secrets. The poem “Fetching” explores family history in nine parts, and its beautiful in its search for truth and love. I also think I’ll return to her more lyrical poems again because they are less accessible and tap into something beyond story.
While some of these poems were definitely over my head and a little too dense for my taste, I overall thoroughly appreciated this collection.
More than anything, though, Childress clearly loves words. I’ve started a new practice of jotting down any words that I don’t fully know when they appear in a poem. After reading Entering the House of Awe, I had a cacophony of words to look up, to repeat out loud, to savor.
June 15, 2012
Saw her speak on "Borrowing the Fictive for Poetry" at Calvin College and immediately bought her book.
Favorites:
"What's Done"
"The Green Spider"
"The Lanterns"
"Mother as Opalescent Bottle"
"Just like Solomon"
"Chloé Phones after Three Weeks Working at the Home
"Torn"
"Where Wings Could Be"
"In the Pocket of Your Winter Coat"
"Love, Anonymous"
"The Necessary Dark"
"All Hallow Even"
"After Your Father's Fallen from the Roof and Not Broken a Thing"
"Cylinder of Lies"
"It's Bright as Heaven out Here"
Favorites:
"What's Done"
"The Green Spider"
"The Lanterns"
"Mother as Opalescent Bottle"
"Just like Solomon"
"Chloé Phones after Three Weeks Working at the Home
"Torn"
"Where Wings Could Be"
"In the Pocket of Your Winter Coat"
"Love, Anonymous"
"The Necessary Dark"
"All Hallow Even"
"After Your Father's Fallen from the Roof and Not Broken a Thing"
"Cylinder of Lies"
"It's Bright as Heaven out Here"
September 6, 2012
Sweetly and soulfully written. A joy to read Childress, as usual!
Check out my full review of this book here:
http://issuu.com/gently_read_literatu...
Check out my full review of this book here:
http://issuu.com/gently_read_literatu...
August 15, 2014
I reviewed the book here: http://nancychenlong.blogspot.com/201...
Read
February 10, 2015It helped shape some new thoughts about imaging.
March 23, 2017
My all-time favorite poet and poetry collection. I adore hearing her reading her work aloud.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews