Plat

by Lindsey Webb

Vivid and haunting elegy facing Mormonism, suicide, and gender in the American West.

Lindsey Webb’s Plat is a haunted, Western elegy which grapples with the suicide of her childhood friend in the context of their Mormon upbringing. In conversation with Joseph Smith’s prophesied but failed heavenly city, the Plat of Zion, Webb explores a vexed, disorienting space. Her prose poems lead the reader through an unearthly garden and into a house which eludes laws of time or space, unearthing the porous border between the living and the dead.

Plat hearkens to Leonora Carrington, Lyn Hejinian, and Willa Cather, with ecstatic and painterly language that broods over gender, death, and memory like a thundercloud. As ecological and built structures feverishly crumble, Webb maps the grief of a yet-unachieved utopias in the wake of personal loss. She considers how dreams for our imagined worlds and selves may survive.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

Published May 28, 2024

Reviews

[Maddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Archway Editions for my copy 💗

4.5 stars rounded up for Goodreads. This is an excellent collection! My heart goes out to the author. Grief can be excruciatingly painful 💔

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This beautiful and beautifully strange book of poetry and prose poetry builds itself like nest architecture out of the loss of a dear friend and the loss of one’s faith. I am in awe of the logic of this book, just as I was with Lindsey’s previous chapbook HOUSE (Ghost Proposal). Familiar images of domestic life and the natural world of the American West are encroached not just by the aforementioned losses but by the mind that finds itself somehow surviving them. Encroached isn’t quite right. Maybe encroached and given structure, too. I’m so excited for this stunning debut collection.

Thank you to Archway Editions for the e-ARC!

[Sandra Del Rio · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Everywhere I plant theories about your death they come up several months later sticky and rotting from the inside with motive"

Rich and cursive, faith and grief resound

[beatrice · Rating 2 out of 5]

actually 2.5, while i think there were some really beautiful lines within this, this just didn't resonate with me as a reader

[Lauren]

Though short and thought-provoking, this was not an intuitive read. Based on its description (and my general experience with mormon-adjacent media,) I anticipated lots of lingo and critiques of the religion’s practices and culture. But all references were vague, and the book’s abstract, poetic structure left me unsure of what I read on nearly every page. It was demanding a level of attention and careful study that I haven’t devoted to a text in a long time…… essentially mimicking the experience of reading scripture.

I’d be curious to discuss this book with both mormons and exmormons. I don’t feel like it leaned too far in either direction

[atito · Rating 5 out of 5]

i was about this collection--what time does the garden keep in eden?

"are there areas where pink rots? Little inlets where the natural pigment, exposed to light, has fled like a fugitive? I'm told these suggest some hybrid world"

[Juliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had the chance to talk to Webb about her book and what a lovely experience! I love her opposition to narrative and closed poetry. It felt like deciphering a code and finding where I fit in. Hints at Mormon culture and Salt Lake City felt like a personal touch.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best of 2024

[Maughn Gregory · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seemed too intentionally opaque, even for poetry.