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We Contain Landscapes: Poems
To whom do we belong, and at what cost?
Patrycja Humienik’s debut poetry collection, We Contain Landscapes, is haunted by questions of desire, borders, and the illusion of national belonging.
Bringing music and rich sensory detail to the page, these poems attend to the inextricable link between our bodies and the land. Over six ruminative and lush sections, they survey place and memory, both intergenerationally and through emotional bonds with other immigrant daughters.
Weaving in letters, innovative forms, and meditations on devotion, sexuality, and self-deceit, We Contain Landscapes introduces a speaker who “will not turn away from the ache of this world.” For every reader who also harbors a voracious longing to encounter infinite landscapes and ways of being, this incisive collection dreams toward a more expansive idea of kinship—of becoming beloved to one another and ourselves.
Patrycja Humienik’s debut poetry collection, We Contain Landscapes, is haunted by questions of desire, borders, and the illusion of national belonging.
Bringing music and rich sensory detail to the page, these poems attend to the inextricable link between our bodies and the land. Over six ruminative and lush sections, they survey place and memory, both intergenerationally and through emotional bonds with other immigrant daughters.
Weaving in letters, innovative forms, and meditations on devotion, sexuality, and self-deceit, We Contain Landscapes introduces a speaker who “will not turn away from the ache of this world.” For every reader who also harbors a voracious longing to encounter infinite landscapes and ways of being, this incisive collection dreams toward a more expansive idea of kinship—of becoming beloved to one another and ourselves.
120 pages, Paperback
Published March 18, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
March 31, 2025
This collection of beautiful poems is focused around the writer’s experience of growing up in the U.S. as the child of Polish immigrants. A lot of the poems meditate on the ways she felt pressured to be live up to her parents’ “American dream,” and I think a lot of children of immigrants will find those in particular to be deeply relatable. These poems are also infused with a sense of seeking beauty, whether in a landscape or a lover’s arms, and the ones about romance and sexuality are particularly stunning. Depictions of religion show the church as both a source of beauty and a source of guilt, and I think those poems will resonate deeply with those who grew up in traditional religion.
I’ve always felt that reading a great poetry collection feels like connecting to the writer on a soul-deep level, and this one definitely delivered. I recommend this one to everyone, but I also feel like it’s down-to-earth enough to be a great introduction to the form for prose readers who want to get into poetry.
Thank you so much to the publisher for gifting me a copy of this book! It’s one I will treasure.
I’ve always felt that reading a great poetry collection feels like connecting to the writer on a soul-deep level, and this one definitely delivered. I recommend this one to everyone, but I also feel like it’s down-to-earth enough to be a great introduction to the form for prose readers who want to get into poetry.
Thank you so much to the publisher for gifting me a copy of this book! It’s one I will treasure.
September 22, 2025
there are some incredible standouts in this—the "letter to another immigrant daughter" suite, "saint hyacinth basilica," "eros and sorrow," "objects," "i defer pleasure"— and just as many filler poems that felt like they added little to nothing to the larger objective of the book.
i continue to struggle with contemporary poetry's tendency towards long, braided, aspirationally modern "epics" as climax. they are rarely life-changingly good, nor do their lengths justify their existence. minus one star for a few too many references to twitter/scrolling/the internet that were disruptive rather than effortless. the internet is hard to set beside natural landscapes, especially in verse, and nature was often foregrounded here. 3.4/5.
i continue to struggle with contemporary poetry's tendency towards long, braided, aspirationally modern "epics" as climax. they are rarely life-changingly good, nor do their lengths justify their existence. minus one star for a few too many references to twitter/scrolling/the internet that were disruptive rather than effortless. the internet is hard to set beside natural landscapes, especially in verse, and nature was often foregrounded here. 3.4/5.
October 25, 2024
“Do to me what sunlight does to a river.” OKKKK
“What is the softest thing / you’ve ever held hostage? At what age / did you first hide your truest feeling?”
“As if a body is a field and the field / is a carnival against loss.”
“What is the softest thing / you’ve ever held hostage? At what age / did you first hide your truest feeling?”
“As if a body is a field and the field / is a carnival against loss.”
February 22, 2025
This collection holds some real gems, particularly the poems that reflect on familial history, complex relationships with faith, and those that use flowers as symbolism. The prose is evocative and deeply emotive—I often found myself fully engaged and was even compelled to do side research on certain places, Polish words, or religious experiences mentioned throughout.
One aspect that stood out was the way themes were interwoven rather than clearly divided into sections. While this created an organic and immersive experience, it also made the structure feel somewhat scattered. A more intentional arrangement — placing certain poems closer together or spacing them apart — could have enhanced the impact of the collection.
The biggest drawback for me was the final stretch of the book. The last 20 or so pages consist of a single poem, which, while containing some beautiful moments, was difficult to follow. Its length and placement — appearing as the final poem of a section rather than in a distinct space of its own — made it feel drawn out and somewhat disconnected from the rest of the collection. This ties back to my concerns about organization; both structurally and stylistically, this poem stood apart in a way that didn’t quite fit with the rest of the work.
Despite these issues, the collection as a whole was a worthwhile read, leaving a lasting impression through its rich imagery and emotional depth. I look forward to reading from this poet again in the future!
Thank you to the publisher, Tin House, for an E-ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions shared in this review are my own!
One aspect that stood out was the way themes were interwoven rather than clearly divided into sections. While this created an organic and immersive experience, it also made the structure feel somewhat scattered. A more intentional arrangement — placing certain poems closer together or spacing them apart — could have enhanced the impact of the collection.
The biggest drawback for me was the final stretch of the book. The last 20 or so pages consist of a single poem, which, while containing some beautiful moments, was difficult to follow. Its length and placement — appearing as the final poem of a section rather than in a distinct space of its own — made it feel drawn out and somewhat disconnected from the rest of the collection. This ties back to my concerns about organization; both structurally and stylistically, this poem stood apart in a way that didn’t quite fit with the rest of the work.
Despite these issues, the collection as a whole was a worthwhile read, leaving a lasting impression through its rich imagery and emotional depth. I look forward to reading from this poet again in the future!
Thank you to the publisher, Tin House, for an E-ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions shared in this review are my own!
May 19, 2025
a tender, piercing collection of poetry that completely revitalized me, and changed my understanding of what kinds of questions poems can ask—this collection was one I had to put down repeatedly to process what I had read before continuing. and here is the highest compliment I can pay to a poetry collection: it made me want to write!!!! <3 Patrycja Humienik is brilliant and without a doubt this book is one of the best of 2025.
August 11, 2025
I LOVED THIS
August 4, 2025
My favorite book of the year so far.
November 19, 2024
Easily one of my new favorite poetry collections of all time—An absolute marvel of beauty, tenderness, insight, mystery, intelligence, surprise, and heart. Every time I reread it I discover even more to love. These are deeply relational poems, full of music, desire, and grief, to study, swoon over, and be held by. Buy a copy for yourself and everyone you know! Lucky us that this book exists, that Humienik wrote it.
December 7, 2024
4.5! this was really lovely, and as an immigrant’s daughter, this deeply resonated with me.
August 17, 2025
I am guilty of writing to be saved.
I am guilty of trying to save.
-- "Letter to Another Immigrant Daughter (For Joyce)"
so, now that we're here together, time conducts
the vision exam -- clearer? how about now? -- to
make of us a long-lasting fragrance
emerging from the woods where
we do not have to burn
anything to taste fire
and that which doesn't seem to make a sound
is a sound inside resounding.
-- "Kissing Like There's No Place Else"
No such thing as the world -- I touch fragments.
-- "Worlds"
March 17, 2025
This debut poetry collection makes use of the canon’s rivers and seas, flowers and leaves, while exploring new territory in spiral staircases and unribboning. Humienik considers questions of chronic illness and inheritance, of a daughter's duty and an immigrant’s place in the world.
Having finished this I feel beaten, like I was bashed against the rocks of Humienik’s poetry until I became pulp. But not all transformation is bad, even if it’s painful.
Having finished this I feel beaten, like I was bashed against the rocks of Humienik’s poetry until I became pulp. But not all transformation is bad, even if it’s painful.
December 28, 2025
for whatever reason this poetry collection didn't really resonate w/ me even though i felt like it "should have". still deciding if b/c of me, the poetry collection itself, or the lingering effects of ts eliot's the waste land.
November 14, 2024
The condition of woman is to stay.
The condition of woman is to grieve.
The condition of woman is to grieve.
April 19, 2025
“I’d draw you a map if it would not divide. // We contain landscapes. / They do not belong to us.” - Eros & Sorrow
One poem I’d like to teach: Saint Hyacinth Basilica.
A beautiful meditation on belonging, daughters in immigrant families, devotion, and bodies that carry the weight of inherited trauma. There were so many strong, moving, intellectually appetizing poems, the only part that fell flat for me was the long poem "On Belonging," in the last section of the collection. Although that poem had its standout moments, overall, it didn't sustain its momentum for me and felt a little too drawn out. In all, Humienik establishes herself as a poet to watch out for in her debut and weaves a vivid world that invites the reader to go sit by a flooded river and ponder on body, home, intergenerational trauma while urging them to write a letter to their favorite immigrant daughter.
One poem I’d like to teach: Saint Hyacinth Basilica.
A beautiful meditation on belonging, daughters in immigrant families, devotion, and bodies that carry the weight of inherited trauma. There were so many strong, moving, intellectually appetizing poems, the only part that fell flat for me was the long poem "On Belonging," in the last section of the collection. Although that poem had its standout moments, overall, it didn't sustain its momentum for me and felt a little too drawn out. In all, Humienik establishes herself as a poet to watch out for in her debut and weaves a vivid world that invites the reader to go sit by a flooded river and ponder on body, home, intergenerational trauma while urging them to write a letter to their favorite immigrant daughter.
October 5, 2025
“Must I consume to love?
Must I be consumed by love?
I trust you know the answer, pollinated by
beetles 95 million years ago. I pluck your sturdy petals, make
tea. Imagine I can read the desiccated pulp. A kind of sacrament
to taste and be tasted. When I am one day buried in the dirt, I offer my
frame, tissue, heart. You didn’t ask me to live on like this. I’m asking you.”
“An Anchor Is an Argument
Growing up, I despised the metronome,
its insistence on orderly time, the lie.
Counting the seconds between flash & stampede
in my childhood bed—storms full of horses.
A woman in the night must be sensitive to sound
in case the sound has a motive.
Anchor is an argument.
A child is the wrong technology for dreaming.
I play Comptine d’un autre été
whenever I come across a piano.
I play with feeling,
but I can never remember the ending”
“I’d draw you a map if it would not divide.
We contain landscapes.
They do not belong to us.”
“Do to me what sunlight does to a river.”
“The woods quiet except for their pulse”
“The difference between a river and a creek is that
from a creek, no new branches are formed.”
“I feared the door. Someone coming to take
my parents away”
“Golden grass stains both my knees.
I say sorry. I say thank you.
I say please.”
“The forest knows
there are needed fires,
and fires birthed by selfishness”
“Rage seems ordinary, easy enough.
But it takes something from you
to travel there.”
“Parts of me are dying.
I don’t have to walk the cemeteries
to speak to them.
To hide or seek might look the same.
What I’m looking for
is subvocal.”
“Undoing takes more effort than
you’d think. Here, the subject was supposed to
be a child. Able to take a joke.
What makes a child serious could be called
devotion. It is beyond obedience.”
“When devotion is self-betrayal,
the body knows. The first time I fainted,
I was a choirgirl. Someone caught me just
before I hit my head. Damn pillar. The saints &
clergy in the dome’s 3,000-square-foot
mural looking down on me. Our Lady
of Częstochowa crowned in ten pounds of gold.
Jackowo, center of Polonia. Three
steeples visible from the Kennedy
Expressway. Glazed terracotta, brick & stone.
Three pairs of heavy bronze doors I never
touched. Girl or woman, holy only
what’s done to me. I don’t agree. Still, that
story leaves a mark. I rarely touch myself.”
“To be abandoned
by dreaming. A woman acted upon.
But I move otherwise. That a daughter
carries the desire of many mothers before”
“I long to
plant flowers there. Dry them upside down”
“My father calls me his American dream
A good daughter is a secret keeper
I suppose I am to live like a kind of evidence”
“Sorry for Taking
so long to call back
the first time the phone
rang I was beneath a
bridge when you rang
again the roar of cars and
cargo overhead made it too
loud to hear you sense of
sea partially obscured
by traffic but felt
when the phone rang
a third time I thought I
could be beneath
you could be water
on the other line if your
voice weren’t so ironed-on
when I answer I don’t ask
if you still iron your shirts
every morning I let you
talk coral tone once
hot pink got too hot
bleached further down
darkness giving shelter
to shells mouthing
open and close when
I hang up I’m sweating I
feel the plastic floating
toward everything”
“It has an appetite”
“Let landscapes
skip rocks across our faces
pressed up against the glass. Tell me a story.
Tell me everything”
“I’m not sure a daughter can ever be grateful enough”
“Easy to confuse habit with ritual,
ritual with devotion, devotion with desire”
“a friend saying, jealousy is good because it is a
form of protection, but what if protection is a form of harm?”
“Sometimes I think of God while washing my feet
I think of where I have not walked my longing
to go further”
“I Defer Pleasure
Let it build. Become
a wall. Then four.”
“First a house, a block,
then a whole city of wanting”
“I argue as though I can change my father”
“Great Polish poets were born in cities that no longer belong to Poland. Now Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine. My people claim the imagined place”
“Each time Poland was erased, the Wisła river remained”
“We climb to see the river at dusk, a different scale, tilting: past-future, future-past.”
“Avoiding great pleasure
to avoid great pain
is a kind of obedience
antithetical to music”
“Drought or torrent, someone works
the land. Along the Pacific,
someone picks fruit I know the name of.”
“To try
to contain anything is
to rid it of water. Admit that
the water is rising.
Admit that
you need a flood.”
“the digital
leaves teeth marks on my thinking. I can feel the presence
of screens in my memory, exerting pressure.”
“I’m obsessed with gerunds, their ongoingness”
“Ecotones
Little birds whose names I don’t know,
underbellies a shock of citrus”
“O tenderness, I’m walking toward you.
Why are you pulling away?”
“Even water has a price.
I was taught it must be sanctified
to be considered holy.”
“Self-Portrait as Hélène Delmaire’s Painting of a Woman in the Bathtub
whose face you cannot see. Head to knees,
back bare, shoulders sloped toward shadow.
I bow to the ache. Surrender in
the color between greens: my thinking
serpentine: cinching the waist of the world.
The bathwater is still, but the walls
are moving. When two paths cross, the colors
bleed. Muddied pinks, burst of rivered yellow.
Winter in the plains. How when spring came,
it was earned. I am listening for
the echo of a bell beneath my tongue.
The condition of woman is to stay.
The condition of woman is to grieve.”
“Acid Reflux
Did it make a home inside
your chest? What is the softest thing
you’ve ever held hostage? At what age
did you first hide your truest
feeling? What feeling then
eclipsed the truer one?
Who did you blame?”
“There’s What I Think and What I Feel
and I don’t always know which is mine.
Cheek pressed against wood once alive.
When I see the cross on the hill
near Pilgrimage Bridge, part of me is kneeling
inside. I can’t turn away fast enough.
Someone else’s dreams were stitched
to this connective tissue before
I could give permission.”
“Sometimes I pray
before meals, more often forget, spitting out
little bones from the same mouth I kiss my lover with.”
“In vespertine woods,
I tried to read moss
by hand. There’s
something laconic
about green that I need.”
“Self splits from self.
Is it chaos, or the order of things?”
“I think the future wants something from me.
•
There are many lives I will never live.”
“I think God has a sense of humor. I can feel God laughing at me.”
“we do not have to burn
anything to taste fire
and that which doesn’t seem to make a sound
is a sound inside resounding.”
“Rocks fall
in and out of love with time.”
“Do we choose the questions
our lives ask?
•
A hundred questions I want to ask
my great-grandmother, whose face I can only
imagine. From what scraps I’ve gathered from
her untold life, she belonged most to God.”
“I am looking for the place
where the trees unmake our image.
I came to dig”
Must I be consumed by love?
I trust you know the answer, pollinated by
beetles 95 million years ago. I pluck your sturdy petals, make
tea. Imagine I can read the desiccated pulp. A kind of sacrament
to taste and be tasted. When I am one day buried in the dirt, I offer my
frame, tissue, heart. You didn’t ask me to live on like this. I’m asking you.”
“An Anchor Is an Argument
Growing up, I despised the metronome,
its insistence on orderly time, the lie.
Counting the seconds between flash & stampede
in my childhood bed—storms full of horses.
A woman in the night must be sensitive to sound
in case the sound has a motive.
Anchor is an argument.
A child is the wrong technology for dreaming.
I play Comptine d’un autre été
whenever I come across a piano.
I play with feeling,
but I can never remember the ending”
“I’d draw you a map if it would not divide.
We contain landscapes.
They do not belong to us.”
“Do to me what sunlight does to a river.”
“The woods quiet except for their pulse”
“The difference between a river and a creek is that
from a creek, no new branches are formed.”
“I feared the door. Someone coming to take
my parents away”
“Golden grass stains both my knees.
I say sorry. I say thank you.
I say please.”
“The forest knows
there are needed fires,
and fires birthed by selfishness”
“Rage seems ordinary, easy enough.
But it takes something from you
to travel there.”
“Parts of me are dying.
I don’t have to walk the cemeteries
to speak to them.
To hide or seek might look the same.
What I’m looking for
is subvocal.”
“Undoing takes more effort than
you’d think. Here, the subject was supposed to
be a child. Able to take a joke.
What makes a child serious could be called
devotion. It is beyond obedience.”
“When devotion is self-betrayal,
the body knows. The first time I fainted,
I was a choirgirl. Someone caught me just
before I hit my head. Damn pillar. The saints &
clergy in the dome’s 3,000-square-foot
mural looking down on me. Our Lady
of Częstochowa crowned in ten pounds of gold.
Jackowo, center of Polonia. Three
steeples visible from the Kennedy
Expressway. Glazed terracotta, brick & stone.
Three pairs of heavy bronze doors I never
touched. Girl or woman, holy only
what’s done to me. I don’t agree. Still, that
story leaves a mark. I rarely touch myself.”
“To be abandoned
by dreaming. A woman acted upon.
But I move otherwise. That a daughter
carries the desire of many mothers before”
“I long to
plant flowers there. Dry them upside down”
“My father calls me his American dream
A good daughter is a secret keeper
I suppose I am to live like a kind of evidence”
“Sorry for Taking
so long to call back
the first time the phone
rang I was beneath a
bridge when you rang
again the roar of cars and
cargo overhead made it too
loud to hear you sense of
sea partially obscured
by traffic but felt
when the phone rang
a third time I thought I
could be beneath
you could be water
on the other line if your
voice weren’t so ironed-on
when I answer I don’t ask
if you still iron your shirts
every morning I let you
talk coral tone once
hot pink got too hot
bleached further down
darkness giving shelter
to shells mouthing
open and close when
I hang up I’m sweating I
feel the plastic floating
toward everything”
“It has an appetite”
“Let landscapes
skip rocks across our faces
pressed up against the glass. Tell me a story.
Tell me everything”
“I’m not sure a daughter can ever be grateful enough”
“Easy to confuse habit with ritual,
ritual with devotion, devotion with desire”
“a friend saying, jealousy is good because it is a
form of protection, but what if protection is a form of harm?”
“Sometimes I think of God while washing my feet
I think of where I have not walked my longing
to go further”
“I Defer Pleasure
Let it build. Become
a wall. Then four.”
“First a house, a block,
then a whole city of wanting”
“I argue as though I can change my father”
“Great Polish poets were born in cities that no longer belong to Poland. Now Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine. My people claim the imagined place”
“Each time Poland was erased, the Wisła river remained”
“We climb to see the river at dusk, a different scale, tilting: past-future, future-past.”
“Avoiding great pleasure
to avoid great pain
is a kind of obedience
antithetical to music”
“Drought or torrent, someone works
the land. Along the Pacific,
someone picks fruit I know the name of.”
“To try
to contain anything is
to rid it of water. Admit that
the water is rising.
Admit that
you need a flood.”
“the digital
leaves teeth marks on my thinking. I can feel the presence
of screens in my memory, exerting pressure.”
“I’m obsessed with gerunds, their ongoingness”
“Ecotones
Little birds whose names I don’t know,
underbellies a shock of citrus”
“O tenderness, I’m walking toward you.
Why are you pulling away?”
“Even water has a price.
I was taught it must be sanctified
to be considered holy.”
“Self-Portrait as Hélène Delmaire’s Painting of a Woman in the Bathtub
whose face you cannot see. Head to knees,
back bare, shoulders sloped toward shadow.
I bow to the ache. Surrender in
the color between greens: my thinking
serpentine: cinching the waist of the world.
The bathwater is still, but the walls
are moving. When two paths cross, the colors
bleed. Muddied pinks, burst of rivered yellow.
Winter in the plains. How when spring came,
it was earned. I am listening for
the echo of a bell beneath my tongue.
The condition of woman is to stay.
The condition of woman is to grieve.”
“Acid Reflux
Did it make a home inside
your chest? What is the softest thing
you’ve ever held hostage? At what age
did you first hide your truest
feeling? What feeling then
eclipsed the truer one?
Who did you blame?”
“There’s What I Think and What I Feel
and I don’t always know which is mine.
Cheek pressed against wood once alive.
When I see the cross on the hill
near Pilgrimage Bridge, part of me is kneeling
inside. I can’t turn away fast enough.
Someone else’s dreams were stitched
to this connective tissue before
I could give permission.”
“Sometimes I pray
before meals, more often forget, spitting out
little bones from the same mouth I kiss my lover with.”
“In vespertine woods,
I tried to read moss
by hand. There’s
something laconic
about green that I need.”
“Self splits from self.
Is it chaos, or the order of things?”
“I think the future wants something from me.
•
There are many lives I will never live.”
“I think God has a sense of humor. I can feel God laughing at me.”
“we do not have to burn
anything to taste fire
and that which doesn’t seem to make a sound
is a sound inside resounding.”
“Rocks fall
in and out of love with time.”
“Do we choose the questions
our lives ask?
•
A hundred questions I want to ask
my great-grandmother, whose face I can only
imagine. From what scraps I’ve gathered from
her untold life, she belonged most to God.”
“I am looking for the place
where the trees unmake our image.
I came to dig”
July 22, 2025
Patrycja’s poems make you want to write. I don’t know any greater compliment I could give. These poems are just as much about longing for a future of possibilities, for the past self, and knowing oneself apart from, and in relativity to what we inherit, whether by blood or by circumstance. If you teach in any capacity, write (no matter how novice), or just love books that make you feel, I highly encourage you to pick this one up.
October 18, 2025
"I play with feeling, but i can never remember the ending"
I literally said wow outloud after only a few pages into this read. Some lines were an instant gut punch in the best way. The ease of connection between its themes flowed from one poem to the next.
Thank you Tin House and NetGalley for the ARC!
I literally said wow outloud after only a few pages into this read. Some lines were an instant gut punch in the best way. The ease of connection between its themes flowed from one poem to the next.
Thank you Tin House and NetGalley for the ARC!
June 19, 2025
Thank you so much to Tin House for the gifted copy! This collection was released in the US on March 18th, 2025.
“I came from this theft / of what cannot be mine. Not time // or rivers. Even my devotions / refuse possession.”
What does it mean to belong—to land, to lineage, to longing? In We Contain Landscapes, Patrycja Humienik doesn’t attempt to answer that question cleanly. Instead, she excavates its layers with a poet’s precision and a daughter’s ache, crafting a debut collection that is as haunted as it is humming with defiance. These poems are maps drawn in contradiction: devotion tangled with doubt, inheritance weighted with grief, queerness blooming through fractured soil.
Humienik writes from the liminal—between Poland and the U.S., between girlhood and womanhood, between being “shielded by whiteness” and aching in solidarity with the undocumented. Her speaker is the queer immigrant daughter who doesn’t quite fit the mythologies she’s been handed: of empire, of nation, of “a better life.” In poems like “Figuration” and “There's What I Think and What I Feel,” the pressures of assimilation and familial expectation coil tightly around the voice, only to be slowly unspooled with lyric tenderness and clarity. And in “Failed Essay on Repressed Sexuality,” one of my favorite pieces, Humienik distills queer grief and eroticism into something paradoxically sharp and soft—nihilistic, yet aching to be known.
Stylistically, the collection is elliptical and textured, with enjambments that mimic the movement of a restless, reaching mind. This is poetry that doesn’t resolve—it pulses, reverberates. “Cruel, how / beauty exists with no regard for goodness or the living,” the speaker observes, and this cruelty—of displacement, of memory, of want—is a current throughout. Still, these poems resist being undone by loss. They are dreamscapes and dirges. They are cracked open but not crumbling.
We Contain Landscapes is a book for anyone who’s ever lived inside a question. For the queer children of immigrants. For those of us who want to believe in something softer than borders. For those who, even in exile, are learning how to bloom.
📖 Read this if you love: poetry about intergenerational longing, queer daughterhood, or the weight of whiteness, empire, and erasure. For fans of Kaveh Akbar and Ocean Vuong.
🔑 Key Themes: Migration and Inheritance, Queerness and Repression, Nationalism and Displacement, Mother-Daughter Entanglement, Belonging Beyond Borders.
“I came from this theft / of what cannot be mine. Not time // or rivers. Even my devotions / refuse possession.”
What does it mean to belong—to land, to lineage, to longing? In We Contain Landscapes, Patrycja Humienik doesn’t attempt to answer that question cleanly. Instead, she excavates its layers with a poet’s precision and a daughter’s ache, crafting a debut collection that is as haunted as it is humming with defiance. These poems are maps drawn in contradiction: devotion tangled with doubt, inheritance weighted with grief, queerness blooming through fractured soil.
Humienik writes from the liminal—between Poland and the U.S., between girlhood and womanhood, between being “shielded by whiteness” and aching in solidarity with the undocumented. Her speaker is the queer immigrant daughter who doesn’t quite fit the mythologies she’s been handed: of empire, of nation, of “a better life.” In poems like “Figuration” and “There's What I Think and What I Feel,” the pressures of assimilation and familial expectation coil tightly around the voice, only to be slowly unspooled with lyric tenderness and clarity. And in “Failed Essay on Repressed Sexuality,” one of my favorite pieces, Humienik distills queer grief and eroticism into something paradoxically sharp and soft—nihilistic, yet aching to be known.
Stylistically, the collection is elliptical and textured, with enjambments that mimic the movement of a restless, reaching mind. This is poetry that doesn’t resolve—it pulses, reverberates. “Cruel, how / beauty exists with no regard for goodness or the living,” the speaker observes, and this cruelty—of displacement, of memory, of want—is a current throughout. Still, these poems resist being undone by loss. They are dreamscapes and dirges. They are cracked open but not crumbling.
We Contain Landscapes is a book for anyone who’s ever lived inside a question. For the queer children of immigrants. For those of us who want to believe in something softer than borders. For those who, even in exile, are learning how to bloom.
📖 Read this if you love: poetry about intergenerational longing, queer daughterhood, or the weight of whiteness, empire, and erasure. For fans of Kaveh Akbar and Ocean Vuong.
🔑 Key Themes: Migration and Inheritance, Queerness and Repression, Nationalism and Displacement, Mother-Daughter Entanglement, Belonging Beyond Borders.
January 3, 2025
4/5 ⭐️
Thanks to NetGalley, Tin House, and Patrycja Humienik for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review. I usually don’t have a hard time reviewing poetry books. I know that’s a thing for some people because it’s such a personal thing—whether or not you connect with the subject matter. For me, I found the poetry in this book really enjoyable and related to in even though I’m not a child of immigrants.
The subject matter is very human. There’s a bit of something for everyone here with topics ranging from dating to generational trauma. Everything is well written with the emotion expressed in beautiful ways. Some lines even made me smile.
My only issue with it was the formatting. It made the reading experience just…less enjoyable. The fact that all of the poems kind of run together ruined that for me. I would have much preferred each poem starting on its own page and having the title at the top of the page. I was reading an ARC and it might not be finished, so that’s something to keep in mind!
Thanks to NetGalley, Tin House, and Patrycja Humienik for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review. I usually don’t have a hard time reviewing poetry books. I know that’s a thing for some people because it’s such a personal thing—whether or not you connect with the subject matter. For me, I found the poetry in this book really enjoyable and related to in even though I’m not a child of immigrants.
The subject matter is very human. There’s a bit of something for everyone here with topics ranging from dating to generational trauma. Everything is well written with the emotion expressed in beautiful ways. Some lines even made me smile.
My only issue with it was the formatting. It made the reading experience just…less enjoyable. The fact that all of the poems kind of run together ruined that for me. I would have much preferred each poem starting on its own page and having the title at the top of the page. I was reading an ARC and it might not be finished, so that’s something to keep in mind!
April 7, 2025
I adore how this collection wrestles with both being an immigrant in America, having immigrant parents, as well as the disconnect felt by their children, both from them, and from the country (and family) they left. So much of this also goes beyond the concept of political boarders and even the political act of existing in a space, and instead rubs up against the question of history-- of what these people you never met might feel about you a few generations later. Now, as we have photos of great- great- grandparents, we can look at their faces and learn more about them, their existence and memory transcending longer than they might have thought. The link between them and us existing more tangibly, and at the same time, tauntingly inaccessible. All of this is a ramble to say that history is exhausting and we don't talk about grieving the people we won't know.
Thanks for the ARC
Thanks for the ARC
November 25, 2024
A gorgeous, haunting collection of poems exploring belonging, desire, and borders from the daughter of Polish immigrants. All of these poems feel like bodies of water, winter, cold wind, salt – the kind of empty desolate natural beauty that feels utterly Polish. Humienik wields her vocabulary and imagery so sharply in this collection - it's a joy to read.
Hundreds of years, and not a day passes that I'm not haunted. Eternity. I swear it is her walking now through fog, wind, rain to reach me. I recognize that coruscating gaze. She stops to see the milk the waves make. Once, we watched them crash to dissolution on this very cliff. Their metallic lurch and charge summoning the swoop of gulls. Lifting sand from the ocean floor to its longed-for gasp.
Hundreds of years, and not a day passes that I'm not haunted. Eternity. I swear it is her walking now through fog, wind, rain to reach me. I recognize that coruscating gaze. She stops to see the milk the waves make. Once, we watched them crash to dissolution on this very cliff. Their metallic lurch and charge summoning the swoop of gulls. Lifting sand from the ocean floor to its longed-for gasp.
September 4, 2025
Every poet deserves 5/5 for dedicating their lives to publishing a poetry book. The variety and depth of these poems was awesome to read and very inspiring, as they all are.
With that being said, didn’t connect with the poems as much as I was hoping. The writing feels a bit abstract, where I would understand it more if I knew them on a personal level. Unfortunately, I do not. I think more concrete images and sentences would help bridge that.
Patrycja is a colleague of Gabrielle Bates, whose poetry book Judas Goat I also read this year and felt very similar about.
However, “Failed Essay on Repressed Sexuality” will stay with me forever. Awesome poem.
With that being said, didn’t connect with the poems as much as I was hoping. The writing feels a bit abstract, where I would understand it more if I knew them on a personal level. Unfortunately, I do not. I think more concrete images and sentences would help bridge that.
Patrycja is a colleague of Gabrielle Bates, whose poetry book Judas Goat I also read this year and felt very similar about.
However, “Failed Essay on Repressed Sexuality” will stay with me forever. Awesome poem.
February 10, 2025
ARC given by NetGalley for Honest Review
A pointed look at immigration and belonging from the daughter of Polish immigrants. Humienik weaves stories and memories through the collection with ease. It's touching and will leave readers feeling satisfied and interested. "The Pipe Organ" especially stood out to me as it reminded me of my Polish friend who shares a passion for music of the church and his heritage.
My favorite poems are: "Failed Essay on Repressed Sexuality", "On Self-Deceit", "On Devotion", and "The Pipe Organ."
A pointed look at immigration and belonging from the daughter of Polish immigrants. Humienik weaves stories and memories through the collection with ease. It's touching and will leave readers feeling satisfied and interested. "The Pipe Organ" especially stood out to me as it reminded me of my Polish friend who shares a passion for music of the church and his heritage.
My favorite poems are: "Failed Essay on Repressed Sexuality", "On Self-Deceit", "On Devotion", and "The Pipe Organ."
June 6, 2025
In Patrycja Humienik’s We Contain Landscapes the spiral staircase appears not as architecture but recursion, a choreography of return without arrival. Instagram filters and Polish earth, selfies and sea salt—these are not juxtapositions but simultaneous hauntings. Rootlessness isn’t lamented—it is cultivated. The sentence stretches, splinters, refuses punctuation’s gravity. This is not poetry to be understood but metabolized, metabolizing you in return. The voice asks nothing. It submerges. It listens for what pulses beneath translation.
January 21, 2025
I am not poetry’s biggest fan, nor am I quite the target audience of this collection as neither a child of an immigrant nor an individual with a strong connection to our natural world. But these concepts are so beautifully conveyed, performative and engaging at once in a way that weaves the struggles of not enough and yet being enough. There will be more to this review later, but it’s time for me to rejoin some of my favorite poems and let them linger longer.
January 10, 2026
Patrycja Humienik's WE CONTAIN LANDSCAPES (Tin House) is a smart, tender, and highly sensory collection that explores the themes of inheritance, daughterhood, immigration, borders, and belonging, and whose speaker is deeply aware-and deeply desirous-of the self's infinite layers and connectivities: a powerful reminder of the ways in which we are most alive, and most at home, inside our own expansiveness.
November 15, 2024
O tenderness, I am walking toward you.
Why are you pulling away?
What a beautiful book of poetry. A few favorites include: On Self Defeat, Saint Hyacinth Basilica, The Pipe Organ, and Ecotones.
Why are you pulling away?
What a beautiful book of poetry. A few favorites include: On Self Defeat, Saint Hyacinth Basilica, The Pipe Organ, and Ecotones.
August 27, 2025
Patrycja takes you places, man, and these poems bring us into what it means to be the daughter of immigrants, what it means to be a woman, and a partner. The collections plays with form so each page feels fresh.
January 21, 2025
Utterly gorgeous book I read ahead of my interview of Patrycja. Ecstatic to speak to her soon.
March 5, 2025
3.5 Rounded Up.
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