Two Minds: Poems

by Callie Siskel

In a piercing and beautiful elegy for the poet’s father, this debut volume investigates the enduring pain and transformative potential of grief. Does loss define us, or do we define loss? Tracing the duality of grief as it reverberates through a family, Callie Siskel wrestles with questions of identity and inheritance in precise, lucid poetry. Two Minds indulges and therefore exposes the vanity of turning private pain into art and the pursuit of self-revelation. Drawing on ekphrasis, ars poetica, and the prose poem, Siskel expands the elegiac genre as she oscillates between childhood and adulthood, art and mythology, as well as the natural and domestic world. At once cerebral and emotional, Two Minds is an essential meditation on the ways that loss cleaves and doubles our perceptive power.

From “Mirror Image”
When he was alive, we rode the elevator.
I recall his reflection in the brass doors

more easily than his body next to mine.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Hardcover

Published April 16, 2024

About the author

Callie Siskel is the author of Arctic Revival, winner of the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. Her poems appear in the Atlantic, Kenyon Review, Yale Review, and Paris Review. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she holds a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Malia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible

[Barbara Wilgus · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Note: Callie is a friend of mine as is her husband but that has zero influence on this review!) I haven’t been this moved by a book of poetry in quite some time. Callie Siskel is really a master of the form, choosing just the right words and meter each time to plumb such depths of emotion. Grief, loss, anger, love, wonder… it’s all here. I quite by chance read her poem about her mother and her motherhood ON mother’s day. It gutted me. So many more moments took my breath as well. You owe yourself a journey through this.

[David Dunlap · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the interest of full disclosure: I do not read much modern/contemporary poetry. I heard an interview with the author when this book was released and thought I might like to read it. I am glad I did. The word 'elegiac' seems to appear in all the reviews and snipped of comments I've read, and I, too, will use it -- as it seems the most appropriate word for the overall tone of this volume. Callie's father was the longtime film critic for the Chicago Tribune, Gene Siskel, and his shadow falls across all the pages of this book. I would not characterize it as a mournful book, but it is quietly and solemnly reflective. I found some of the verses in this collection deeply moving; all of them are touching. Recommended for those who like this sort of thing or who, like me, are curious about the absent -- but very much present -- subject of the poems...

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parentheses

I stream consciousness,
withhold emotion,
nest inside myself. I shelve

a fleeting thought, manifest
an echo. I know
your secrets, hear as a handcupped

ear. I keep you
from the point:
I am the life of the poet

(b. 1986, whose life will end)
when I am unified.
Already, I closed around

her father. I was the sound
of his final word,
a telephone wave, transmitted

to her. I was the hole
in the ground.
The stone on his grave.

The mourner’s yarmulke,
the mouth
of her grief, the shape

of his face, the cleft
on his chin, how she
cleaved to him.

The space inside which
she waits
and waits.

[Stephanie Metz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t read much poetry; I tend to prefer novels. I picked up this collection after hearing a wonderful interview with the author on NPR. I absolutely loved this book. Siskel’s imagery and word choice will keep you rereading the poems multiple times. I found myself thinking about the poems hours after reading them.

[Angel Maldonado · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book... recommended by Burns from Wisecrack 😉

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly moving and incredibly crafted.

[Ajibola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterful