Stop Wanting

by Lizzie Harris

In this debut collection, Harris confronts memory with anxiety and persistence as she unravels her own childhood trauma with visceral clarity. This bleak and violent narrative is contrasted by vibrant and surprising imagery—the result is an experience that’s somehow both harrowing and enjoyable.
Harris replays the past at varying volumes and frequencies, slowing it down just enough that we see it plainly for the first time.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 2014

About the author

Lizzie Harris was born in southern Arizona, and raised in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Her poems appear in All Hollow, The Carolina Quarterly, Barrow Street Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Phantom Limb, Sixth Finch and VICE.com.

She’s a poetry editor for Bodega Magazine—bogedamag.com—and resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Reviews

[Adam Dalva · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection I've come back to many times, over the last 5 years, sharp and prescient and wrenching:

"I remember the touching
was softer than I wanted
and after I wanted things quiet
because I didn’t trust the skin
that skinned my little body I don’t want to be vague"

"For many years life won’t
let you in, which will only
make you think
more of it. Even time
will pass on. Time will grow
thin like a ponytail. You’ll take buses
to trains to planes.
You’ll be disappointed
it was such a short
and comfortable ride."

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

"And if anger // were a knife, who could even hold it?

One of the most arresting books I've read this year.

[Kait · Rating 2 out of 5]

"It was then you said a woman's body could be broken into and I was sure you meant out of" - Page 43.


Maybe I read this book at the wrong time, maybe I just didn't read it over enough times but I didn't get the hype on this one. Some poems were definitely better than others, and there was a lot of theme repetition between the poems (mainly regarding her difficult relationships with her parents and the desert - neither of which I can relate to). Some pieces I felt were trying too hard to be deep and poetic and lacked real significant depth, but others were quite the opposite. I would recommend this book if you like to analyze poetry, enjoy extensive metaphor and imagery, and want to reflect on your own childhood family relationships. My favourites were Mother on the highway, Rough chronology IV, and There's grass somewhere but I don't know how to find it.

[Lindsay Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up in NY a few years ago and just found it on my bookshelf this week. So happy I did! Harris's use of imagery is outstanding, and the regional nuances took me into her world as I read. What a stunning work of art to come from difficult circumstances. Pick it up and sit with it awhile. You'll be thankful you did.

[Kwoya Maples · Rating 5 out of 5]

So glad I read this book. Well done.

[Elizabeth Wall · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing collection of deep, raw, visceral poetry. If I could give it six stars, I would.

[Downward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stop Wanting's poems naturally fall into a complex and emotive narrative, about a daughter, whose father is alternately sweet and violent, though much more the latter, before becoming ultimately absent, though only physically: it'd be hard to argue that his presence is gone. The poems come from a reflective place, sometime in the future, using this relationship/nonrelationship with the father as a lens through which to view varying aspects of her adult life. Lizzie Harris uses the body as a metaphor: tongues, and stomachs, and skin stretched tight. Imagery that sets you down in the Arizona desert and pulls your comfort away from you. Some of these poems totally wrecked me. I swallowed it all in one gulp, so allow for some mistakes in this review, some miles and miles of words and images that I missed, some point that escaped me, but the feelings ring loudly and more important, truly. A killer collection, this.

[Gorfo]

With this haunting collection of poetry, Lizzie Harris communicates the vague and gnawing persistence of dealing with childhood sexual abuse and rape. Regret, twisted desire and confusion pervade each poem, always echoing back to the omnipresent theme at hand.


Maybe it's wrong to want for things,
but I wanted to be a woman who flipped beauty
like a wrestler. I wanted to see men open up
after great and terrifying haircuts.

I was born on a runway desert,
in a constellation of mobile homes, old bones
of an airport. I wanted a body: soft fruit
to grow a skin around. In the desert
I wanted water, wanted bad to stop wanting me.
I wanted some alarm to sound
around my body. I sagged, wearing my brother's

green jeans. I wanted to be a boy
or to find myself closed. Is it strange to want
the past like too many hairs clinging in a drain?
Memory is kind, spares me this one time.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are crystal-clear and so moving in their clarity.

[John Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A necessary book. Heartbreaking. Gorgeous. Indelible.