What do you think?
Rate this book
a boot's a boot
Poems; Lewis's fourth full-length book and winner of the 2013 Cleveland State University Poetry Center Open Book Competition.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published April 14, 2014
1 person is currently reading
15 people want to read
About the author
Lesle Lewis
10 books5 followersLesle Lewis' collections include Small Boat (winner of the 2002 Iowa Poetry Prize), Landscapes I & II (Alice James Books, 2006), lie down too (Alice James Books, 2011), and A Boot's a Boot (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2014). Her chapbook, It's Rothko in Winter or Belgium was published by Factory Hollow Press in 2012. She has had poems appear in American Letters and Commentary, Northern New England Review, Hotel Amerika, Mississippi Review, The Cincinnati Review, Green Mountains Review, Barrow Street Mudfish, LIT, Pool, jubilat, notnostrums, and Sentence. She lives in New Hampshire and is a Professor of Creative Writing at Landmark College.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 19, 2020
One of the best books of poetry I've ever read. I don't know what it is about Lesle Lewis but her lines speak to me. Plainspoken surrealism. Dreamtalk fragments. This is my third book of hers I have read and it is my favorite of the three, and I don't think it's particularly better than the others, I just think I'm becoming more and more enamored with every word.
January 19, 2015
I love Lesle Lewis's idiosyncratic, plain-spoken poems, which comprise seemingly disparate, unrelated images and thoughts that come together to create exquisite word sculptures--some beautiful, some curious and inscrutable, some sad...all wonderfully playful and vibrant. "Your Pills," a favorite poem from this collection:
Glass with gin on tile on table sits on floor on earth with rain.
Everything is just a thought; nothing is a project.
Machines roar around.
I count your tablets and leave them for you in a cup on the windowsill.
They kick up their tiny pill heels and dance for you.
Glass with gin on tile on table sits on floor on earth with rain.
Everything is just a thought; nothing is a project.
Machines roar around.
I count your tablets and leave them for you in a cup on the windowsill.
They kick up their tiny pill heels and dance for you.
Read
July 21, 2025“The rain is dark pink… In your face is another face I could love” (10)
"In our pale green dresses in our pale green rooms by our pale open windows, we embroidered flower pots" (15)
"I don't want this to be my job, but it is, to sit and think of you" (18)
"It's difficult to get a thing right without getting something else wrong" (20)
"Each magnetic silver insect has a consciousness as complicated as yours" (22)
"You've sewn your heaven into a ceramic flower. You've said my second person is something almost schizophrenic./ You're right" (23).
"I think of you whenever I think of you" (35)
"My thinking goes flat, and you roll over it in your cubist pick-up./ I dreamed I understood you but then missed my flight home" (39)
"I stab at your musical heart./ I dare you to love me now" (50)
"The brain can't stand an empty space so it finds things and tortures them" (50)
"The trash can is bluer than the sky, and my bike is blue as the trash can" (54)
"The baby bangs his cup on the table/ I read your spiritual notebook/ I do not want to grieve for this publically/ I sit and grieve into the closet" (55)
"You might say love is made of the sadness of its inevitable ending" (56)
"The frog croaks as vividly as the water lily is pink./ Why did I think the frog was unnecessary?/ I guess I've lost my plastic eye./ Love is a winged fruit and a trombone and a conch" (56)
"The smallness of our comfort zones is pretty funny" (58)
"We try to see things in three dimensions and then to choose one as our declared position" (64)
"I am happy just to ride in her backseat./ I am sad over people./ I might get over this with bowl after bowl of coffee, but I smoke cigarettes and drink tea in the rain./ I use an electronic cane, go to the sparkle chapel, pray to punk guardians./ I am driven to practice intentional innocence./ This is how I stop what I'm doing and drive somewhere else./ This is the me looking out to sea" (68)
"In our pale green dresses in our pale green rooms by our pale open windows, we embroidered flower pots" (15)
"I don't want this to be my job, but it is, to sit and think of you" (18)
"It's difficult to get a thing right without getting something else wrong" (20)
"Each magnetic silver insect has a consciousness as complicated as yours" (22)
"You've sewn your heaven into a ceramic flower. You've said my second person is something almost schizophrenic./ You're right" (23).
"I think of you whenever I think of you" (35)
"My thinking goes flat, and you roll over it in your cubist pick-up./ I dreamed I understood you but then missed my flight home" (39)
"I stab at your musical heart./ I dare you to love me now" (50)
"The brain can't stand an empty space so it finds things and tortures them" (50)
"The trash can is bluer than the sky, and my bike is blue as the trash can" (54)
"The baby bangs his cup on the table/ I read your spiritual notebook/ I do not want to grieve for this publically/ I sit and grieve into the closet" (55)
"You might say love is made of the sadness of its inevitable ending" (56)
"The frog croaks as vividly as the water lily is pink./ Why did I think the frog was unnecessary?/ I guess I've lost my plastic eye./ Love is a winged fruit and a trombone and a conch" (56)
"The smallness of our comfort zones is pretty funny" (58)
"We try to see things in three dimensions and then to choose one as our declared position" (64)
"I am happy just to ride in her backseat./ I am sad over people./ I might get over this with bowl after bowl of coffee, but I smoke cigarettes and drink tea in the rain./ I use an electronic cane, go to the sparkle chapel, pray to punk guardians./ I am driven to practice intentional innocence./ This is how I stop what I'm doing and drive somewhere else./ This is the me looking out to sea" (68)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews