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Winner of the 2013 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize
Eryn Green’s Eruv is the latest winner of the oldest annual literary award in the United States, which originated in 1919 to showcase the works of exceptional American poets under the age of forty. Green joins an esteemed roster of past winners that includes Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, W. S. Merwin, and Robert Hass, and as Carl Phillips, competition judge and chancellor of the American Academy of Poets, points out, this collection “reminds us how essential wilderness is to poetry—a wilderness in terms of how form and language both reinvent and get reinvented.”
Taking its title from the Hebrew word for a ritual enclosure that opens from private into public spaces, Eruv includes poems of love, sadness, and pathos while celebrating the power of ritual and untamed landscapes. Just as a larger home can be fashioned out of communally shared alleyways and courtyards, with passages enabling movement from one world to another, Green’s poems provide a similar doorway into a deeper understanding of ourselves.
Eryn Green’s Eruv is the latest winner of the oldest annual literary award in the United States, which originated in 1919 to showcase the works of exceptional American poets under the age of forty. Green joins an esteemed roster of past winners that includes Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, W. S. Merwin, and Robert Hass, and as Carl Phillips, competition judge and chancellor of the American Academy of Poets, points out, this collection “reminds us how essential wilderness is to poetry—a wilderness in terms of how form and language both reinvent and get reinvented.”
Taking its title from the Hebrew word for a ritual enclosure that opens from private into public spaces, Eruv includes poems of love, sadness, and pathos while celebrating the power of ritual and untamed landscapes. Just as a larger home can be fashioned out of communally shared alleyways and courtyards, with passages enabling movement from one world to another, Green’s poems provide a similar doorway into a deeper understanding of ourselves.
- GenresPoetry
70 pages, Paperback
First published April 8, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 8, 2015
remarkable debut. mature poet.
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November 26, 2016Beautiful, just beautiful
October 8, 2020
Out-stubborned
emotional sea-urchin
in the shallows (stabbed me) in the shallows of the heart ---
~ Entropical (the Bulk)
Eruv by Eryn Green is his first published collection of poetry. Green, with this collection, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets. The Yale Series is the oldest literary award in the United States and open to poets under forty who have not published a volume of poetry. Green earned his MFA from the University of Utah and his PhD in creative writing from the University of Denver in 2013. This collection also has an introduction written by Carl Phillips.
I saved the introduction of this book for last. It is well written and informative, but poetry is personal and I wanted an unprejudiced experience before allowing others to explain it to me. This collection does for the most part remain out of doors. Nature is a continuous theme through the work. From the beginning when he gives the latin name for staghorn sumac, to big-tooth maples, to references to the night sky calling it “lights in the ceiling” or using other imagery.
I was driving downtown
when what I thought
was chandelier
was actually sky*
~Blackout
The poems follow an open form with standard lines instead of paragraphs. In places some lines are indented and irregularly spaced to give a pace or rhythm to the reader. Other times as in the opening poem, “First Walk,” the spacing is creative and few lines appear on each page with what appears to be perforations across the page made by dashes, to break up individual thoughts.
Green has written an outstanding collection of poetry. If I had not known better I would have assumed it was written by a mature poet. He delivers paragraphs of imagery in few lines. The more traditional subject material is refreshing in today’s environment of experimentation and expanding boundaries. Phillips’s forward gives an excellent introduction and traces some of Green’s influences. A very readable and enjoyable collection.
*(The second and fourth line are indented)
This was a Goodreads giveaway book.
emotional sea-urchin
in the shallows (stabbed me) in the shallows of the heart ---
~ Entropical (the Bulk)
Eruv by Eryn Green is his first published collection of poetry. Green, with this collection, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets. The Yale Series is the oldest literary award in the United States and open to poets under forty who have not published a volume of poetry. Green earned his MFA from the University of Utah and his PhD in creative writing from the University of Denver in 2013. This collection also has an introduction written by Carl Phillips.
I saved the introduction of this book for last. It is well written and informative, but poetry is personal and I wanted an unprejudiced experience before allowing others to explain it to me. This collection does for the most part remain out of doors. Nature is a continuous theme through the work. From the beginning when he gives the latin name for staghorn sumac, to big-tooth maples, to references to the night sky calling it “lights in the ceiling” or using other imagery.
I was driving downtown
when what I thought
was chandelier
was actually sky*
~Blackout
The poems follow an open form with standard lines instead of paragraphs. In places some lines are indented and irregularly spaced to give a pace or rhythm to the reader. Other times as in the opening poem, “First Walk,” the spacing is creative and few lines appear on each page with what appears to be perforations across the page made by dashes, to break up individual thoughts.
Green has written an outstanding collection of poetry. If I had not known better I would have assumed it was written by a mature poet. He delivers paragraphs of imagery in few lines. The more traditional subject material is refreshing in today’s environment of experimentation and expanding boundaries. Phillips’s forward gives an excellent introduction and traces some of Green’s influences. A very readable and enjoyable collection.
*(The second and fourth line are indented)
This was a Goodreads giveaway book.
June 1, 2025
Sublimely beautiful, mysterious, and full of heart. A triumph of originality and style, and a charm for loving the "perfect world" whose perfection is wrought from error. This book is a work of pure spirit and miracle.
May 5, 2014
What are these poems "about"? Beats me, but there is a lot of sharp imagery and clever language and a paucity of easy answers, quick lessons, and memoiristic homilies. Those characteristics alone make it worth reading.
August 4, 2016
I won a free copy from the Goodreads First Reads Giveaway Program and think that it interesting. I would recommend it to everyone.
Read
September 15, 2014Review by Esther Cohen for the Jewish Book Council.
April 30, 2015
it's really choppy and hard to follow; skimmed over the last few pages.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews