Blue Yodel (Volume 109)

Yale Series of Younger Poets

by Ansel Elkins, Carl Phillips (Foreword)

Winner of the 2014 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize
 
Originated in 1919 to showcase the works of exceptional American poets under the age of forty, the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize is the oldest annual literary award presented in the United States. Ansel Elkins’s poetry collection, Blue Yodel , is the 109th volume to be so honored. Esteemed poet and competition judge Carl Phillips praises Elkins for her “arresting use of persona,” calling her poems “razor-edged in their intelligence, Southern Gothic in their sensibility.”
 
In her imaginative and haunting debut collection, Elkins introduces readers to a multitude of characters whose “otherness” has condemned them to live on the margins of society. She weaves blues, ballads, folklore, and storytelling into an intricate tapestry that depicts the violence, poverty, and loneliness of the Deep South, as well as the compassion, generosity, and hope that brings light to people in their darkest times. The blue yodel heard throughout this diverse compilation is a raw, primal, deeply felt expression of the human experience, calling on us to reach out to the isolated and disenfranchised and to find the humanity in every person.

Genres: Poetry, American

88 pages, Hardcover

First published March 31, 2015

Reviews

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blue Yodel is the winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize for Ansel Elkins for what is her debut poetry collection. As I read this over two sittings I was struck by the power and immediacy of Elkin's voice, by her unflinching look into the often dark corners of life. But I am also struck by the beauty of her words, the Southern country setting, the strength of her people---however eccentric.

Among my favorite poems are: The Girl with Antlers, Autobiography of Eve, Real Housewives, Tornado, Hour of the Wolf, Reverse: A Lynching, and Ghost at My Door. There are some others that left me scratching my head a bit and which definitely will need more time to reconnoiter but almost all are immediately effective on some level.

There are elements of myth and folk tales sprinkled here and there and also at least a couple of places that, for me, spoke of an Oriental influence.

From Hour of the Wolf:


Souls of the newdead drift
Like floating lanterns
Over a river woven with ghosts.


There are also numerous evocations of the wind which has a role to play in several poems. Here in Ghost at My Door


Wind guides its fingers into the windowless house,
threads through the yawn of absent door, where, even
if nothing inside me moves, the wind's breath
moves through me. Sings
through my bones like wind chimes
hanging from eaves. Awakens
my skin to the forgotten sense of touch.


I will look for more from Elkins in the future and also return to this collection again in the future.

(addendum--any errors in reproduction of line breaks in the poetry are mine)

Highly recommended


This book was received from the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the play between genre tropes (werewolves, angels, ghosts), popular culture (Real Housewives) and very fresh formal poetry. I have an innate bias against the Southern Gothic, but this book always surprised and moved me.

My two favorite poems in the book, and indeed two of my favorite poems of all:

The Girl with Antlers
https://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poe...

Reverse: A Lynching
http://bostonreview.net/poetry/ansel-...

Very highly recommended.

[Rexy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blue Yodel

"Things just happen, Elkins implies, and they often enough happen randomly, for no more reason than whatever reason we choose to assign to them—"

The poems in "Blue Yodel" are deep and sentimental. It's not the traditional poetry book. It's hard to understand if you won't reflect on what it wants to say. If, like me, you're expecting something like Lang Leav, don't get this book. Some poems are not my cup of tea because more often than not I had to read the pieces a few times over before I finally made sense of what its trying to say. However, I'm a hundred percent sure that readers who go for that kind of poetry will enjoy 'Blue Yodel' enough to give it a rating higher than 3 stars.

Some pieces with no indicated time made me wonder what period the poems are supposed to describe. Is it the past, the present or the future? Whatever the case, the poems are timeless in the sense that they can be interpreted in all three time periods.

I agree with Carl Phillips that the placement of some poems normally make the reader wonder if the latter one is connected, maybe even a sort of continuation, of the previous one. Case in point, the succeeding number of poems that has the word "werewolf" in it. It makes one wonder if that's the author's intention, or just your mind and memory playing tricks on you. Maybe it's a little bit of both.

Of course this review would be remiss if I fail to mention that I found many pieces weird and unusual. "The Girl with the Antlers", which precisely details the story of what the title implies, is a great example. As a realist I'll forever wonder what those antlers signify but they fit in well with the language of poetry.

My favorites:
-Autobiography of Eve,
(which speaks about choice and freedom)
-Winter Burial (which speaks about death),
-Real Housewives (which speaks about reality),
-Tornado(which speaks about a child's innocence),
-Crying Wolf (which speaks about good and evil in a man),
-Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory (which speaks about the blossoming of feminine desire)
-Ghost at my Door (which speaks about a mother's despair and breakdown at the loss of her daughter)
-Hunter's Moon (which speaks about freedom in lovemaking)

Based from this list, again I agree with Carl Phillips's words at the start of my review. "Things just happen, Elkins implies, and they often enough happen randomly, for no more reason than whatever reason we choose to assign to them—". Like I said, the tone of the poems in Blue Yodel is serious and sentimental, but one should note that there are lots of amusing and brilliant poetic symbols along the way. They hint at life and reality. -not straight enough to make them a plain old narration, but instead colorful enough to make them fit for poetry.

I rate this book 3/5 stars. Many thanks for Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy.

[Donald Armfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Southern Gothic poetry, a call to the wild. Blue Yodel has a powerful meaning behind every line. A collection of character and moods set in the south. Well told stories in their prose selves.

My favorites:

*The Girl with Antlers: I tore myself out of my own mother's womb. There was no other way to arrive in this world. A terrified midwife monster and left me in pine woods with only the moon. My mother's blood dripped from my teed head.

*A Devil's Rope: At dawn the deer move like ghost over the hill, trailed by the devil, the patient wolf. I open your hand and cover it with mine. Will you forgive me, love when buried beyond the sun's reach, beyond the dark brothers.

*Tornado
*Mississippi Pastoral
*Reverse: A Lynching
*Hunters Moon

[Marina Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do you rate a poetry collection? How can you even shelve it as 'read' rather than 'still reading'. I'll be coming back to this. There are so many avenues and poems to explore, so many influences, so many voices that are familiar while others are strange and even sinister. So many nuances I haven't quite got yet, so much symbolism still to crack. Melodious and playful language in parts, also a powerful punch to the gut in other parts. Certainly not 'pretty, poetic, flowery' language.

[Hilda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let it be known: I did not fall from grace.

I lept
to freedom.

Just like the book describes, this is an imaginative and haunting debut collection by Ansel Elkins. I don't read poetry. It scares me. I'm slowly getting over this fear. Especially with books like this one. This collection of poems is amazing. It's dark and beautiful and at times sad. It was highly recommended by a fellow GR friend and I have to agree with him. It's wonderful.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am learning about different poetry prizes. This is one I have heard of a few times. Some of the poems had a deep impact. Undoing the lynching. Some scenes in poems i recognized, some i didn't. I recognized the violence, though I see it on the news and not so much in my daily life. The spacing of the lines on the page added to the impact of many of the poems.

[Haines Eason · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection is quite beautiful and transports the reader ably to the world of the Southern Gothic. However, the tools and tones of the trope remain visible throughout--they feel put on. The Yales are always ably composed, but often too much of the schooling comes through.

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blue Yodel by Ansel Elkins is the winner of the 2014 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. Elkins has earned degrees from Sarah Lawrence College and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her work has appeared in AGNI, The Believer, Best New Poets 2011, Ecotone, Guernica, Gulf Coast, the North American Review, the Southern Review, and others.

Finishing the year with a collection of poetry is a wonderful way to wrap up the old year and the Yale Series of Younger Poets never disappoints. Elkins collection is simply amazing in several ways. The imagery and emotion in the poems are superlative. Elkins southern roots come into play in several times. There are at least two mentions of pickup trucks that fit perfectly into the poems without sounding like a Country-Western song. In “Blues for the Death of the Sun” Elkins writes:

Across the blackened hills I hear a peacock holler his blue yodel

It is her only mention of the blue yodel. The Blue Yodel, however, is also a record album and the nickname of singer Jimmie Rodgers, who also frequented the same parts of the country as Elkins, decades earlier. There is, at times, a very Southern feel to her work.

Elkins also writes from a woman’s perspective. In “Autobiography of Eve,” Elkins takes a rebellious approach:

Let it be known: I did not fall from grace
I leapt
to freedom

and

“Werewolf in the Girl’s Dormitory” gives the lines:
The Reformatory School for Misbehaving Girls keeps its young
vixens walled in.
…
She’s wayward...in all the right ways.


There is a monumental darkness in some poems like “Tornado” where a small child is ripped from her mother’s arms by the fury of the storm. The reader is torn by the sadness and the beauty of the writing. “Ghost at My Door” brings the same mix of engaging verse and deep, dark, mourning. The poem “The Adventures of the Double-Headed Girl” takes the reader to the freak show, but releases him or her like seeds from a maple tree. The darkness is broken in a few places. “Real Housewives” takes the reader through divorce, a six inch stiletto shoe fight, and and a botched breast augmentation --“ OMG, the tete-a-tete of misaligned titties.”

Two of her poems are rapid-fire lines. Short burst of a few words in rapid succession: "Reverse: A Lynching" and "Thou Shall Not." No matter what the subject, Elkin gives it elegance and imagery. It is difficult not to admire lines such as:

We walked to my front door as evening spread her grand indigo
gown across the town.

or

What is memory but a wind blowing through you?

Darkness or light, hope or despair, elegance or harshness, proper or racy, Blue Yodel explores the duality of experience in a way that draws the reader in and holds him or her in place with words that are inviting even if instincts say run. A very appropriate collection for my last book read in 2014 and my first review of 2015. An absolutely outstanding collection of poetry.

[Eunice (nerdytalksbookblog) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Favorites: The Girl with Antlers, The Lighthouse Keeper, Devil's Rope, Reverse: A Lynching, War Mask, Going to the Movies Alone and Real Housewives

The ones i found odd: Thou Shalt Not, Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory and Ghost at My Door

I loved the uniqueness of it, the different stories it conveys, some are really odd but most of it are really good. It could even be a perfect plot of a fantasy novel. Maybe the only issue I had was the format of it, it was kind of confusing, but all in all it was a solid read. I love how unconventional it was.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fresh and interesting take on myth making, religion, history, and persona.

The language and structure of each poem was appropriate for the subject and the audience.

I loved so many of them, it's hard to narrow it down, but I really liked the Autobiography of Eve.

I also liked the fantastical/mystical feel of the Girl with Antlers.

SO MANY creative leaps, interesting ways of looking at things, and fresh language.

None of these poems bored me or bogged me down, and this made me happy when I consider the tired tropes in some of the more recent poetry books I have recently been reading.

Recommended Read.

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book in exchange for an honest review

These poems are beautiful and haunting and i have reread this one several times. There are a few odd-balls in the mix which kind of throw off the dark and haunting life in the south theme (ex. "Real Housewives"), but those are very good too. My favorite was Reverse Lynching, which was so wonderful and power that it left me breathless. I will recommend this one to every poetry-lover I know.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is good poetry. The book is beautifully put together. Every poem satisfies. Worth your time and money.

[Alicia (PrettyBrownEyeReader) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard of this poet when reading the short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw. The epigraph for the collection is the last two lines of the poem, Autobiography of Eve from this collection.

When I started reading this collection I knew I would be hooked because the epigraph of the collection is a quote from one of my favorite writers, Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston is a storyteller and so is Elkins. The stories told in this poetry collection cover a myriad: breaking in a horse, Emmett Till’s murder, a traveling preacher, a lost child in the Mississippi delta and others. She tells the stories through memorable characters and descriptions in each of the poems.

The title of the collection is an interesting one. It can be found in the first poem of the collection, Blues for the Death of the Sun. “…I hear a peacock holler this blue yodel.” Each of the poems is like the peacock showing and telling the reader something.

This is a poetry collection I will return to again and again.

[Sarah Lain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blue Yodel has an otherworldly voice, a sense of another time, another way of seeing. I had never heard of Ansel Elkins before picking up this book, and I'm grateful to have found her work. In some places, I wanted to heighten poetic diction, complicate syntax, but then, I kept retracting that desire-- which is what her poems have the power to do. She's important to study for extended metaphor and poetic integrity, by which I mean that magical truth-telling we all hope to achieve as writers. "Reverse: a Lynching" was conceptually brilliant, in the way that cyclical, historical injustice is a thing we keep wanting to undo, and which we can only do in this sort of imaginative writing. This author has a deep-woods vision in the pen of a modern writer, and I'll keep coming back to her work because of that uniqueness.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read one of the poems from this collection, The Girl with the Antlers, online in a journal or somewhere (I cannot recall) and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I bought this collection based on that single poem and how it was haunting me. The rest of the poems are incredible, and I absolutely loved reading it — but even now, that is my favorite poem in it. I’m going to return to this book time and time again. I feel incredibly lucky that I came across their work. I look forward to reading many more poems from Ansel Elkins.

[Meg Ready · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. Elkins creates a collection that is meditative and incantatory in unhousing the inner wolf of self, other, and society. She weds narrative with the supernatural to establish a landscape that is haunting in its familiarity. As a reader, you're constantly braced for the thawing of a frozen wilderness that is both stilted and claustrophobic in its understanding that nothing ever truly lays dormant. A must read.

[Libby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted so badly to love this book but it fell flat. While some of the poems are incredible, moving and thought-provoking (and the reason I’ll keep the book instead of giving it to someone else) - such as Thou Shalt Not, Autobiography of Eve, and Reverse: A Lynching - the rest of the poems felt lacklustre and boring.

[Cody Stetzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a strong, moderately erotic collection on desire and grief.

[Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️ faves are:

1. Autobiography of Eve p. 10
2. Real Housewives p. 19
3. Monogamy p. 22
4. Reverse-A Lynching p. 35
5. Crying Wolf p. 37
6. War Mask p. 40
7. Call of the Wild p. 44-5

[lyn]

Hmmm.

[Hannah Warren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Speaking from Eve’s point of view, Elkins writes, “Let it be known: I did not fall from grace. / I leapt / to freedom” (“Autobiography of Eve” 14-16).

[Tess Ranieri · Rating 5 out of 5]

We read the poem native memory! It was great!

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Nothing lives here anymore. Only hushed land."

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book of poetry that begs to be read again and again. Elkin's ability to weave a story - of loss, heartache, mystery - pulls you in and doesn't release you till you, a bit reluctantly, turn the final page.

"Mississippi Pastoral" begins painting an idyllic picture - it isn't till the sheriff is called by his title that we realize all may not be well in this poem. "The Girl With Antlers" begins with full power: I tore myself out of my mother's womb. / There was no other way to arrive in the world. "Autobiography of Eve" was one of my favorite poems - it begins with "Wearing nothing but snakeskin / boots, I blazed a footpath..." and ends with "I leapt / to freedom."

An excellent book of poetry that I recommend to all!

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was the winner of the 2014 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize and marks an amazing debut of a talented poet. With an introduction by Carl Phillips, this collection is haunting, a rich study of contrast, contradiction and juxtaposition, full of characters and moments, thick with Southern Gothic tradition, that stay with the reader. Very highly recommended.

[I received an advance e-galley of this book through Netgalley. The book is due to be released March 31, 2015.]

[Ron Mohring · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of my favorite poems: "Ghost at My Door," "Mississippi Delta: Glass in the Field," "Reverse: A Lynching,""Aiming a Shotgun at the Sky," "Tornado," "The Lighthouse Keeper." A book I've returned to several times. I know I'll be back again.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

amazing

[John Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the wolf book. I didn't know when I'd find it, but I have now. Extraordinary.

[hh · Rating 3 out of 5]

loved some poems like "Thou Shalt Not" - which could have been gimmicky but isn't - but overall the book didn't coalesce for me.