Geode

by Ona Gritz

Contemporary poetry collection. Geode was a finalist for the 2013 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published February 18, 2014

About the author

Ona Gritz writes memoir, essays, and poetry for adults, verse novels for teens, and fiction for children. Her memoir, Everywhere I Look, will be released on April 16th from Apprentice House Press of Loyola University.

Ona’s nonfiction has appeared widely, including in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Utne Reader, Brevity, Parents, The Rumpus, and River Teeth. Among her recent honors are two Notable mentions in The Best American Essays and A Best Life Story in Salon.

Ona’s poetry collection Geode was a finalist for the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. Her poems can be found in Ploughshares, The Bellevue Literary Review, One Art, Catamaran Literary Reader, Stone Gathering, SWWIM, Literary Mama, and elsewhere. In 2020, she won The Poetry Archive Now: Wordview 2020 Project.

Ona’s 2023 novel for children, August Or Forever, was a Reader’s Choice and Wishing Shelf finalist in middle grade fiction. The Space You Left Behind, her first young adult novel, written in verse, is forthcoming from West 44 Books in June 2024.

Reviews

[Literary Mama]

Much like geodes themselves, the poems in Ona Gritz's first full-length collection, Geode, are deceptively plain at first glance. However, Gritz's subtle observations reveal depths of emotional resonance. With casual yet muscular language, Gritz's poetry sets readers' expectations of quiet moments and then upends them with a surprise turn of phrase or a devastating event. Composed of three major sections that follow a woman's life chronologically from girlhood to adulthood, the book ranges thematically from growing up with hemiplegia, to marriage and divorce, to finding new love. Motherhood dominates the second half of the book. Gritz's teenage son, Ethan, is the subject of many of these poems, several of which have also graced the Literary Mama Poetry pages. Gritz's name may also be familiar to readers from her column "Doing It Differently." In her writing, Gritz shares moments intimately, as if over a cup of coffee, then stuns the reader with unexpected language and crystalline insight.

Read Literary Mama's full review here: http://www.literarymama.com/reviews/a...