What Is Amazing

by Heather Christle

Inspired by a voracious curiosity about humans and other subjects, the poems in Heather Christle's What Is Amazing describe and invent worlds in an attempt to understand through participation. The book draws upon the wisdom of foolishness and the logic of glee, while simultaneously exploring the suffering inherent to embodied consciousness. Speakers play out moments of bravado and fear, love and mortality, disappointment and desire. They socialize incorrigibly with lakes, lovers, fire, and readers, reasoning their way to unreasonable conclusions. These poems try to understand how it is that we come to recognize and differentiate objects and beings, how wholly each is attached to its name, and which space reveals them. What Is Amazing delights in fully inhabiting its varied forms and voices, singing worlds that often coincide with our own.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages

First published February 14, 2012

About the author

Heather Christle is the author of The Crying Book (Catapult), a NYT Editor’s Choice, Indie Next Selection, and national bestseller that was translated into eight languages, awarded the Georgia Book Award for memoir, and adapted for radio by the BBC. An Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University in Atlanta, Christle is also the author of four poetry collections including The Trees The Trees (Octopus Books), which won the Believer Book Award and was adapted into a ballet by the Pacific Northwest Ballet. In 2021 she was the recipient of a George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship in nonfiction. Born in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire to a Merchant Mariner from North Dakota and an artist from London, Christle spent her teen years and early twenties immersed in the Boston punk scene. She attended Tufts University, graduating in 2004. After receiving her MFA from UMass Amherst in 2009, she was a Creative Writing Fellow at Emory University from 2009-11, and has also taught at UT Austin and Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in Decatur, Georgia, with her partner (poet and writer Christopher DeWeese), their child, and two cats.

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't enjoy it too much until I heard her read. That made the book for me

[Eric Cartier · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this collection as much as Christle's previous two. There are bright lines that leap off the page, but not as many poems that shimmer in their entirety.

* * * * *

to finish at last the portrait of the cloud

and to look up and discover
now the subject has moved on

[Eric T. Voigt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bummed it's all over. Loads of lines end up to be punch-lines. The moving poems are unexpected. There are twists. Wacky then wise. Favorite chunk: "And I hope I do not drown/as I have seen happen/to hundreds of spiders/b/c I love to swim/and to drown would/wreck swimming/for a long time."

[Kate Wyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I READ THIS COLLECTION TWO TIMES THROUGH. Oh, caps lock was on. The excitement of the capitals fits though.

But the book is actually quiet. Even with its exclamation points and slyness.

I admire how she is so purposefully playing with what a poem is on the page. There are no periods in the first section. Periods appear in the last poem in the second section. The third has more standarized puncutation and pretty damn perfect couplets. The key is that it all feels on purpose.

I WILL KNOW YOU BY YOUR RED CARNATION is my favorite, but there are also quite a few others. TO KEW BY TRAM for example.

When her poems open at their ends, rather than close with an abstraction or with something from left field, they really give you that feeling, that mixture of joy and despair. I felt more of the third section poems were open in this way.

[Martyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though the title of this collection isn't really a question the answer, if it were one, would be "this book".

There is some jaw dropping language, and brain plumbing metaphors that defy description; I think stunning is too ordinary a word for what's going on here. Heather Christle's poetry is moving and affecting and, once you realize just how she is presenting her unique view of the world, really quite enlightening.

[Kathleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

http://coldfrontmag.com/reviews/what-...

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

dreamy, cutely violent and sad

[Carl Waluconis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've only just become acquainted this poet from a poem in "New Yorker", but I'm glad I followed up. She has a new kind of poetic voice. She sounds like someone in a hurry and slightly bewildered by what she meets in the world. She can be critical but stays, as her title states, "amazed". It is really impossible to catch the flavor of her voice with a quotation from a poem. You need the entire thing, or maybe even a few from this slim collection. But I will try. In the middle of her winning, slight confusion, she may suddenly have an insightful perception:
and time seems nearly correct
but that is its mischievous nature.
These lines on time also happen to describe her poetry. Her voice is mischievous. I'm looking forward to reading her most recent book of poems.

[Rupert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not get enough of this nourishing book. Read each poem twice, then when I finished the book I started back at the beginning.
Not much poetry speaks to me to create a song from, but quite a few of these did.

[Lizette · Rating 4 out of 5]

“People love to clean their ears and I love people”.

Ella puede decir cualquier cosa, por más absurda que sea, y yo estaré como: sí, es completamente cierto, estoy de acuerdo. Y voy a llorar con cada cosa linda y tierna que diga (muchas). Te quiero, Christle.

[Maura Cuneo · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is BY FAR my LEAST FAVORITE book EVER.

[K. Iver · Rating 5 out of 5]

These lines are pure magic.

[Anji M · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love all Heather Christle's work I've read thus far, but this book just didn't click with me in the same way her other works have. Still enjoyed, and some standout poems, just not a favorite.

[Seth LaRue · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it. My only problem is maybe I loved many poems in it more than the book itself. C’est la vie and my taste here

[Ben Ringel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for class, 3.5 ish, it’s fun!

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH FIRE

They asked me if I was on fire and I said No no no no
no no no I did not want to make trouble I was lying I was
on fire on my legs and on my hands I was ashamed I tried
to hide my legs by kneeling I set the grass on fire...


IF YOU GO INTO THE WOODS YOU WILL FIND IT HAS A TECHNOLOGY

This tree has a small LED display
It is glowing and it can show you words
and it can show you pictures and it can melt
from one choice to another and you are looking at it
and it wants you to share the message
but it can't see that you are the only one around
and that everyone else is hibernating
which you love You are so happy and alone
with the red and yellow lights It's a nice day
to be in nature and to read up on the very bland ideas
this tree has about how to live This tree says
grow stronger and this tree says fireworks effect
This tree is the saddest prophet in history
but you don't' tell it that You are trying to show it respect
which gets tiresome but then it flashes
a snake at you It's a kind of LED tree hybrid joke
and you could just kiss it for trying For failing
But it can't see you and it starts to cry

TO KEW BY TRAM

Lying down among the daffodils I am composed
but not the daffodils because I crushed them! Not
as an act in itself It was auxiliary Were my next
attempt to stand myself erect upon my feet
I would leave behind devastation
in the organized shape of my body
This is also how I move myself through
space Everywhere these holes I don't look
back to When I return as a giraffe the holes
will have to change They will say no god
would plan on such a shape And if then
I lie down again on these yellow flowers they
will teach me that goldenness is dim


Unique and thought provoking. The titles sometimes had nothing to do with the poems at first glance, what does an English tram to Kew have to do with crushing daffodils? But there was a rhythm that made sense later as you read more and read them again. I liked the structure of the poems, they did seem to open with something ethereal, abstract, and end with pessimistic views of what we can learn from the world instead of the "logic of foolishness and wisdom of glee" they are purported to contain. I think trees and daffodils have more than bland and dim wisdom to impart, but I am a nature ecstatic and am drawn to that kind of poetry. Mark Doty, a poet I admire, wrote that she is a voice of the early 21st century and I cringe at that because if so, it is a focus on the negative only, and there is so much more that needs to be said. For example, GO AND PLAY OUTSIDE is a great title for a poem, but talks about how "...what loops the world gives us gives us EAGLES! and ugliness it gives us too. what gives us away is not the world, is its disappearance, how still we breathe out as if we could hide." There is so much more beauty in the world, and I wish she would take her intricate and unique wordplay and show us that. I think it would be stunning.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite having read two of her books, I haven't quite jumped on the Heather Christie bandwagon. As others have said, there are some brilliant lines and inspiring questions and ideas in many of these poems, but as whole pieces, they mostly feel incomplete, to me, tip-of-the-iceberg thoughts that don't follow through. I'd read a few lines that were really thought-provoking, but then the poem jumped to something else and I was left wanting a bit more from the first idea. Would love to have seen some of these expanded, which may have led to a better understanding of some of the images that seemed otherwise randomly thrown in.

[Stella · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm actually a little hesitant to rate this book at all - because it's not that I thought this was bad poetry, I just definitely don't think it's my kind of poetry. I found part i incredibly difficult to get through, the style not particularly enjoyable - although I loved many of the titles, they seemed like poems in and of themselves, without any need for the following blocks of text. Parts ii and iii seemed to have more to say to me (although less exciting titles), and while there were a couple of poems I almost could have liked (and I really did enjoy the final poem), for the most part this just wasn't my book of poetry.

[cori · Rating 5 out of 5]

"the spider" (34) -
"the spider he is confused
b/c i am not killing him
only moving him outdoors
when i die i do not want
to feel confused
no i would rather feel clarity
like i am a pool
and death a chlorine tablet
i want it to feel
not like i am dying
but am being transferred
to the outside
and i hope i do not drown
as i have seen happen
to hundreds of spiders
b/c i love to swim
and to drown would
wreck swimming
for a long time
but death is like none of this
i know that death is a tower
standing in the middle of the town
and the tower receives
many visits
and there's no one
but spiders inside"

[Jamie Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once upon a time I would have read this cover to cover in one sitting, and am glad I didn't. But Part 1 / The Seaside! is a good single-sitting read. The second and third parts felt like they had a more New Yorker cadence to them then other work, I've read, but I can roll with that and liked what was going on. "Angry Fawn" is just great. Many poems in here are just great. Make sure you see her at a reading -- that's great, too. Grab the book. Enjoy.

[Gavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favorite sections of the book:

Part I - is like listening to your sweet, but ADHD, "crazy" aunt who looks at everything around her with a rhizomatic eye and tells you all about what she sees and feels, but somehow her hyper-attentive, ocular disbursal gels together with a tensive power that unifies splintering with reconstitution...

Part III - reminds me of some of Rae Armantrout's more recent work: a shifting and imagistic techtonics which also moves the reader with its lyricism...

[Trey Harris]

not her best book, but there were some really good poems in here. also I think it's like instructive or indicative of poetry right now. I think it's a good book and you should read it, but you should read it after you read her other two and stuff. this review is not as good as the book. it is not a very good review.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like her two previous collections, this one sinks in slowly but once she gets fully into your mental space there's no removing her. Gets better and greater depths revealed (like any great art) with repeated visits.

[Luis Correa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Precious moments. Amazing moments. Shout-out to "Angry Faun" and bitch-slapping houses.

[Amanda Moore · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were many amazing lines and images here, but what really stays with me is the form: the line breaks, the the capital letters...all of it. I'm intrigued.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tattoo worthy.

(I must be out of my mind)

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this, can't wait to read more by this author.

[Jacob]

"and the world will go on lightly turning
with its millions of small adjustments
that make space for us
that let us get through"