In No One's Land

by Paige Ackerson-Kiely

Poetry. Winner of the 2006 Sawtooth Poetry Prize, Paige Ackerson-Kiely's IN NO ONE'S LAND "...stakes a claim on wilderness and, most assuredly, mannages to homestead there. These are not the poems borne of quiet contemplation; they are edgy and lurid, painfully administering to the world of convenience stores, diners, one-night stads..daring to pick at the raw skin of being and to call it beauty...From the starkness of glaciers to the empty refrigerator, these poems rise from the most barren landscapes and manage to make of them fabled islands, joyful joyful things"--D.A. Powell.

Genres: Poetry

75 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2007

Reviews

[Rauan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cagey and vicious-- and harboring love it just can't kill. If you want to taste what this book's like just check out the picture of Paige on the back cover. And then read it. And be eaten.

[Shilo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I covered my body / with birdseed. / Still, birds did not / come to feed / on my body. / Finally, my solemn shoes / murmured: stand up. / Stand up now please / you joyful, joyful thing."

[Charlotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

Assigned in college, I think largely because my professor knew the poet, but I'm obsessed with the way she writes and this work was hugely inspirational when I was then asked to write my own poetry.

[A.M. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Depressing, full of loathing and unapproachable in the sense that I, personally, felt the poet wasn't sharing with me but seething at me - daring me to enter her hopeless state of mind, mocking my inability to understand her inexplicable poems then tearing after me with a kitchen knife as I ran screaming towards a telephone booth to exit this whacked out Matrix. It took me a month to read this collection, because I dreaded picking it up ...

Still, I did like a few poems. Here is one of them:

Shepherding

Mild lamb, I would
gather so closely to me.
I raise my hand,
ask to be chosen.
Life was interesting
when I believed everything
I heard. Now
there is wool in my ear canal.
I give myself away.
Take this hay, take this
big heap of wet hay
in your pitchfork.
Move it somewhere else.
There is plenty of room
in the field. I smoke
behind the fencepost.
I know clearly that I will
remove my pants
when it is requested
I remove my pants.
They will call all of us in
on cold nights,
though no one calls
to me specifically.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love the anger. Anger that is vicious, hardly contained, and yet so well worded that it has to have undergone heavy revision... Writing that makes it look easy.

I love the honesty overall here (or at least what feels like honesty), the stabbing shocks and quiet moments that feel real. And there is a real talent - some fantastic turns of phrase, sweet rhythms... And what I find lacking in a lot of early books by newer writers - there is a great cohesion to the work. This -feels- like a book rather than a collection of poems that were once published somewhere.

So, after all this praise, why the medial rating? I'm not sure I can explain. What it boils down to is that there wasn't a single poem that reached out to me and just grabbed me by the throat. I think it may deserve four stars rather than three, but despite all of the honesty here, it did feel like the poet was hiding behind something in some small way.

[Eric Susak · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a difficult time getting through this book, mostly, I think, because the writing style challenged my aesthetic preferences. Every poem Ackerson-Kiely wrote in this book bends the way normality works. Objects take actions; emotions and thoughts take tangible shape. It is hard for me to see things acting wildly out of their normal tendencies. If you yearn for that fantastical view of life, then I recommend this book.

[Karyna McGlynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review forthcoming from Tarpaulin Sky, but I'd really like to give it 4.5 stars here. It's an amazing book: inviting, seductive, smart, Hopper-esque, constantly surprising. Maintains spine while it trickles and darts. Gets away with a sort of new sentimentality and confessionalism that most books of poetry can't, especially without being flippant or cloying. Highly recommended.

[Tonia Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was like slipping inside a journal of someone's life at once strange and familiar. It reads like a conversation over coffee and cheap cigarettes. As a poet, I wanted to answer back with my own fallible words, but chose instead to listen to what this poet had to say. I was astounded. My skin crawled and my dreams went wild with poetry. Well done.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the few books I've read recently where a poem just grabbed me and shook me and made me gather my apples. Some poems risk simplicity and it works.

Also, WTF with all the prose poems? This is another books where I don't think they're doing the work they need to do. Goddamn.

[Matthew Hittinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice prose poems.