Blue Opening: Poems

by Chet'la Sebree

“A profound poetic talent.”―Ada Limón

Blue Opening, Chet’la Sebree’s brilliant, illuminating poetry collection, grapples with origins―of illness, of language, of the universe―as the speaker contemplates whether she, too, can be a site of origin through motherhood. Navigating chronic health challenges alongside grief and questions about the nature of knowledge and religion, she searches personal history and the cosmos for answers to the unknowable.

With startling clarity and vivid tenderness, Blue Opening calls into question not only where to begin, but how to create, across thirty-two poems that press the fluid boundaries of form through sonnets, prose poems, odes, and two unforgettable poetic sequences. As the speaker traverses loss, possibility, and the choice, or often the lack of choice, in the direction of her future, she determines to press forward even as she is “unsure of what shape this language should take / and hulling, from blue rock, faith.”

Genres: Poetry

82 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 16, 2025

Reviews

[Taylor Franson-Thiel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sound work goes crazy this book is so smart and so rad.

[June · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this collection would be good for someone who resonates with the topics… looking at chronic illness and potential motherhood sometimes with a biblical type lens… but good poetry should connect with me regardless in the craft. I also do not always love the usage of science and medical terms by poets as a way of making something feel more cold/by-the-book or more like atoms in the cosmos i don’t know it feels cliché oftentimes. I did not find the predominantly prose poetry to be all that interesting, but I nevertheless found a few poems that stuck to me like sticky pearls. And I’ll always appreciate a poetry collections ability to lull me to sleep before bed in quiet contemplation, which Blue Opening provided. This book is blue or whatever.

Favorite poems - Creation, The Beginning, Blue Opening, and Revelation

[jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you so much to Tin House for sending me this gorgeous collection.

This was a wonderful and very “female” read. It contains themes of matriarchal lineage, motherhood, creation and grief, illness, and incorporating religious, spiritual, celestial and water imagery. It can be abrupt and urgent within a soothing flow and I really appreciated that dichotomy. I admired her view of motherhood and desire to be a mother. It is, throughout, a resonate collection full of pain and ferocity.

I’d definitely recommend this beauty.

[Acamea Deadwiler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection intertwines science, personal reflection and existential examination in a viscerally engaging manner.

[sarah panic · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know if I have ever felt so seen by a group of poems, I seriously read the whole book out loud to myself and all the creatures in the bayou. The prose is delicious and rolls off your tongue like liquid. To have Sebree intertwine chronic illness, motherhood, and religion all while simultaneously being able to make me the reader see her while seeing myself? I AM A FOREVER FAN!

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I read Blue Opening by Chet'la Sebree, I was blown away by how open and honest her collection of poems was. She lays herself open and exposes so much of herself for us, the lucky reader (Thanks Tin House)

     I wrote down creation, grief, history, and health, as just some of the words that came to mind while reading. I won't spoil things, but the health topics that are contained in Sebree's words are something I think all women experience, but it also just felt so familiar to me as something so many women I know and love have also endured. Odd to say I think, but there was a level of comfort in that universality to me? It's a reminder of how connected we all really are and how we are more alike than we are different from one another.

    This gem releases in a few weeks, and I encourage everyone (not just women) to give it a read and sit with it, and give it a thought or two.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about origins, the body, illness, identity, and survival.

from Etiology: A Fairy Tale: "Once upon a time, there was a young woman with knotted flesh in her chest, with lumps congregating in her armpits, a clump in her ovary with skin, hair and teeth: it would not become a baby. And as the woman continued to grow, the stories / kept starting over."

from Baby Talk: "I am pregnant with grief— / it's bloated, black, a matted thatch. / By which I mean / I fear the carriage of it— / bundle of writhing decomposition / I'm meant to keep hidden; / by which I mean, / I fear its miscarriage— / public displays / of rot and decay."

from The Beginning: "In poems, I return to water like a baptismal font. Here, I can Big Bang myself—begin again ad nauseam."

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poems in this collection never really captured me, but I appreciate Sebree's willingness to address the complications of desired motherhood with openness and honesty. She focuses on various beginnings--cosmic, physical, familial, disease, scriptural The central sequence consists of 14 semi-sonnets, written in block form each with 140 syllables, including these representative lines:
"May I forgive my foremothers, others, self, to lead
me out of suffering and deliver me from Even.
For mine is the kingdom where I have the glory
to tell a different story. Forever and ever."

Starred these poems: "Autoimmune Aubade"; "The Beginning"; "Unknown Origin"; and the "Genesis" sonnet sequence.

[KJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not usually one for poetry but this was really moving while also being approachable. The writing was gorgeous and sad, but I could see the stories and threads woven throughout each poem. As a collection I thought this was very impactful, and I'm glad I read it!

[Elena Macdonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting musings on illness & history

[Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved how this collection plays with beginnings—of the universe & of faith (atom & adam!), of words, of family, etc. i also loved the mix of structures and styles!

[angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

this stanza sums up the book for me:

“translation and etymology
scaffolding from which I hope
to discover something
like a dead frog’s heart still bleeding.”

[serrein · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[sage · Rating 3 out of 5]

simply could not connect beyond a poem or two