It Blows You Hollow

by Diane Seuss

With these dark, triumphant poems, Diane Seuss takes us on a journey through the landscape of the soul and it's a world full of beauty and violence in equal parts. Relentless and incantatory, these poems are charged with an almost religious intensity as Seuss looks for God's presence in nature and sexuality. Again and again the poet confronts whatever it is that guides us through a life that is sensuous, yet exacting in its terrible cost.
Nothing is solved by the end of this book, but much is gained as the quest itself has become a victory of perfectly pitched and furious language. God's still hidden away, but by now the natural world has evolved to replace the absence Seuss feels. In the book's erotically charged universe, one paradoxically begins to feel a calm settle over the burned-up panorama of the soul. It Blows You Hollow is a book, rare these days, that feels as if it had to be written. Diane Seuss goes for broke."

Genres: Poetry

67 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1998

About the author

Diane Seuss was born in Indiana and raised in Michigan. She earned a BA from Kalamazoo College and an MSW from Western Michigan University. Her work has appeared in Poetry, the Georgia Review, Brevity, Able Muse, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and the Missouri Review, as well as The Best American Poetry 2014. She was the MacLean Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English at Colorado College in 2012, and she has taught at Kalamazoo College since 1988.

Reviews

[Amorak Huey · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first poetry read of 2025 is Diane Seuss’s 1998 debut.

From the physical aesthetic of the book and the first few poems, I thought, this feels kind of like Diane Seuss filtered through the late ‘90s — and then, wow. The book just soars. Seuss had already hit her stride, found her voice.

So good.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had pulled this book out even before Seuss got the Pulitzer for "Frank:Sonnets." I have read her more recent stuff, which I admire immensely, and wanted to read this much earlier work to see how she got to where she is. Of course, I read it even more intensely after the announcement two days ago.

There are several things that point toward later abilities. Clearly Seuss has always been fond of the list, and lets those develop. Here she might even go on longer than she does later. Yes, maybe a time or two too long. She uses the list rather than any obviously written metaphor; the elements in the list achieve a kind of metaphoric weight.

And god! She seems god-haunted in this book. I'm going to have to reread some of the later work to see how that has changed. Or has it disappeared?

The poems have that grittiness that she is known for now, even if sometimes she's not quite as explicit as she would become later when she became more comfortable with her place in the world. The poverty of her background, her rural isolation as a child where nothing seems farther away than the life of literature, her suspicion of academic understanding, and above all, her life as a woman, her attention on her woman's body -- these are all here even if they are not quite as sophisticated as they become later.

Sometimes in these poems she does seem to go on a bit. The brilliance of "Frank" is that she uses the rough 14 line form to keep control of that. It has made her select from her rich observations, which sometimes dominate this very interesting early work.

Also, there is a kind of regional specificity in this book that seems somehow underplayed in later work. No, that is wrong, because one of my joys in reading Seuss is the recognition of places and actions I know and understand. But, for instance, the whole third section here is placed on Drummond Island, an isolated place off the eastern tip of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Most people who live in Michigan don't know this place, let alone the place-names there and the geology associated with it. I do, and loved these poems, that came to me so unexpectedly. What the hell was Diane Seuss doing on Drummond Island? And why did she choose to go there during what was obviously a difficult moment? Maybe someday I'll get the chance to ask her? These Drummond Island poems were a delicious surprise.

[chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cheers! Cheers.
To unblessed food. To the one
that got away. To outlasting God.
-- "Morels"

Her destiny tumbles across the flatlands towards her.
A very small thing moved by the wind.
-- "I Am Not Lost"

[june · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I remember you,
an angel at the Pentecostal church, bangs too short,
speaking in tongues. I want to offer it back to you: my tongue.
I want to give you this, the second half of my life.
Will you look at me, although I am strange?"

"In other words, love, / I walk this dark minefield / searching for you."

"Our gorgeous eyes. / Our genderless kisses. Our exquisite prayers."

"or opening the severed breastbone to show you / my heartlessness."

"Even placing myself on the lap of some / lowdown archangel with burns on his belt buckle is a lie. / There's no way out."

"No one touches my face or reaches inside / the holes in my words."

"The little museum of our former lives"

"Lifelong grief is not enough for this dog. / He wants my devotion"

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first book published by Diane Seuss. She has a unique way of putting together her poems. Miniatures that hint of a longer unspoken story; stories with clear images pulling like tides toward some harrowing whole.

[Rick Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I come back to this book and enjoy it more with every read. Dark and triumphant. Playful and honest.

[O · Rating 5 out of 5]

This being any poets debut is insane, but is not at all surprising knowing Diane’s work now. No one is doing it like her!

[Sebastian]

First read: December 31, 2025, Wednesday

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost every poem in this collection had lines that gave me goosebumps of recognition. Many of the passages sound like they were whispered by my ghost. They fluctuated between my past and present, making me feel like I was a step out of time, which only lent to the lonely but accompanied experience.
The collection as a whole was satisfying. While most of the poems were flaming hot or icy cold, there were a few that were tepid, and I assume those were simply the ones I haven't lived yet. This will definitely be a book I read over and over.