What do you think?
Rate this book
Four-Legged Girl: Poems
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry
"Diane Seuss writes with the intensity of a soothsayer." —Laura Kasischke
For, having imagined your body one way I found it to be another way, it was yielding,
but only as the Destroying Angel mushroom yields, its softness allied
with its poison, and your legs were not petals or tendrils as I'd believed,
but brazen, the deviant tentacles beneath the underskirt of a secret queen
—from "Oh four-legged girl, it's either you or the ossuary"
In Diane Seuss's Four-Legged Girl, her audacious, hothouse language swerves into pain and rapture, as she recounts a life lived at the edges of containment. Ghostly, sexy, and plaintive, these poems skip to the tune of a jump rope, fill a wishing well with desire and other trinkets, and they remember past lush lives in New York City, in rural Michigan, and in love. In the final poem, she sings of the four-legged girl, the body made strange to itself and to others. This collection establishes Seuss's poetic voice, as rich and emotional as any in contemporary poetry.
"Diane Seuss writes with the intensity of a soothsayer." —Laura Kasischke
For, having imagined your body one way I found it to be another way, it was yielding,
but only as the Destroying Angel mushroom yields, its softness allied
with its poison, and your legs were not petals or tendrils as I'd believed,
but brazen, the deviant tentacles beneath the underskirt of a secret queen
—from "Oh four-legged girl, it's either you or the ossuary"
In Diane Seuss's Four-Legged Girl, her audacious, hothouse language swerves into pain and rapture, as she recounts a life lived at the edges of containment. Ghostly, sexy, and plaintive, these poems skip to the tune of a jump rope, fill a wishing well with desire and other trinkets, and they remember past lush lives in New York City, in rural Michigan, and in love. In the final poem, she sings of the four-legged girl, the body made strange to itself and to others. This collection establishes Seuss's poetic voice, as rich and emotional as any in contemporary poetry.
73 pages, Paperback
First published October 6, 2015
40 people are currently reading
906 people want to read
About the author
Diane Seuss
25 books231 followersDiane Seuss was born in Indiana and raised in Michigan. She earned a BA from Kalamazoo College and an MSW from Western Michigan University. Her work has appeared in Poetry, the Georgia Review, Brevity, Able Muse, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and the Missouri Review, as well as The Best American Poetry 2014. She was the MacLean Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English at Colorado College in 2012, and she has taught at Kalamazoo College since 1988.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
June 24, 2021
"A horizon is just a girl yawning at the edge..."
"For hours at a time, that killer whispered in my ear, droning on about his gruesome misdeeds
like a mosquito or a husband. I forgot to say
I'd discovered Rimbaud by then. His jaundiced
point of view had ruined me. Every flower, every tree,
every stone was inked purple by his stinking, ornate
arrogance. I sat in the chair and smoked. The chair
swallowed me, and I smoked."
"Burroughs would have peed on my poetry, but he loved my porn."
Seuss is unparalleled. Unforgettable! DEEP LOVE!!
"For hours at a time, that killer whispered in my ear, droning on about his gruesome misdeeds
like a mosquito or a husband. I forgot to say
I'd discovered Rimbaud by then. His jaundiced
point of view had ruined me. Every flower, every tree,
every stone was inked purple by his stinking, ornate
arrogance. I sat in the chair and smoked. The chair
swallowed me, and I smoked."
"Burroughs would have peed on my poetry, but he loved my porn."
Seuss is unparalleled. Unforgettable! DEEP LOVE!!
February 14, 2018
These poems take their inspiration from a real-life woman, born in the 19th century with four legs. The collection is divided into parts that represent time periods in the woman's life. The longest, and for me most satisfying, is the section devoted to the childhood.
The poems are fierce, loving, passionate expressions of personhood. The language is, at time, hallucinatory which I especially enjoyed. There seems to be an overlap between the woman's life and the poet's own feelings, although I may have imagined that. Like all good poetry, there is room for different interpretations although the overall story arc is clear.
I was sick when I read these poems, which may have added to my pleasure (although it may also have confused some of my interpretations). It was a good companion to me during that time and I look forward to reading it again when I am more clear headed. Something tells me it will live up to a rereading.
The poems are fierce, loving, passionate expressions of personhood. The language is, at time, hallucinatory which I especially enjoyed. There seems to be an overlap between the woman's life and the poet's own feelings, although I may have imagined that. Like all good poetry, there is room for different interpretations although the overall story arc is clear.
I was sick when I read these poems, which may have added to my pleasure (although it may also have confused some of my interpretations). It was a good companion to me during that time and I look forward to reading it again when I am more clear headed. Something tells me it will live up to a rereading.
May 23, 2016
This collection is fierce and female and both beautiful and grimy. I love poetry that is edgy and dark and slightly more narrative. She is accessible because although I'm sure the craft of her poetry is something to be appreciated and dissected by those with more specific training, the words themselves offer a human connection and an attachment to the world that will expand your heart and your mind. I highly recommend even if you don't usually read poetry.
September 17, 2016
Incredible book of poetry coming from my home state of Michigan. Love the way Diane weaves her stories in poem format. A new fave. First half of book is incredible with a few weaker poems in the second half. Diane's weaker poems are still great, though. Highly recommend.
December 31, 2015
Well, according to Goodreads, I must have "started" this collection of poetry when I got the book in the mail back in October. Then I guess I forgot to keep reading it until last night. While some poetry books are meant to be savored, taken slowly, that method didn't work for me with this book. Overall, I just wanted this collection to be something it wasn't. I'm a fan of Myrtle Corbin, the four-legged girl on the cover and the namesake of the book (I once did a series of paper dolls [plywood ones as well] of various circus sideshow performers, and she was one of them), and while I did like the poem specifically about her (it's the last in the collection), I wasn't awestruck either. In fact, I can't think of a single poem now that really stayed with me (and I read most of the poems last night), other than the fact William S. Burroughs is mentioned in one, and Andy Warhol in another, and while Diane Seuss is not just name-dropping (I did enjoy the use of color in the Warhol one), she isn't not name-dropping either.
I could have seen myself enjoying these poems when I was younger, but curiously enough, one of the larger themes I saw evident in the work was that of nostaglia, and yet Seuss's nostalgia, did not catch fire, was not at all contagious. And I'm a sucker for nostalgia, and even when the writer is nostaglic for something I've never before encountered, something I couldn't possible yearn for again since I never knew it to begin with, the right author can pull me with her tugging words, her carefully selected language, in such a way I can empathetically yearn with her as she tries to go home again, but this just didn't happen this time.
Seuss's descriptions of flowers are indeed gorgeous, and I guess there's a layer of melancholy to these homages of violets and irises and poppies because they, like anything beautiful, will eventually wilt. That said, I found myself wondering too often if I'd like the collection more had there been a more selective process for what was included. The flower descriptions I liked also felt redundant--"Didn't I just read about violets?" I'd wonder, and the word "lush" seemed to scar the pages as it was repeated again and again, and yet I could find no reason why it needed to be used so much. I liked the moments where the poems were dressed in the poet's personae's costume jewelry, when they were draped in her vintage rags, and when they reclined upon her velvet-covered chairs rescued from the rain, from the streets, but otherwise, all these poems did was play dress-up, and I didn't know why. The narrative thread of the dead junkie lover never really struck my heart the way I think it was supposed to because I was never given any idea of who this man was before his addiction, before the paper-thin poppy-burst lesions of AIDS took over his body, and Eden fell; in fact, I never really saw the Eden, and so I didn't know what had been lost. But most of all, I think what was lacking were the metaphors, the paradox, the layers I like to peel back on the poems (and the prose) I most love.
I suppose Four-Legged Girl is important in the archival sense that it details 1980s (and 1990s) New York City; a peephole looking back on a time when this city was just as littered with exciting artists, art, and art-making as it was with addicts, and the homeless. If I'd been the editor of the collection, I would have pushed the poet to explore the undercurrents of art, to let her art-making rise to the top as her saviour, her crux, but maybe I'm missing the point entirely: maybe this is not an incident of the Kuntstlerroman, and maybe I'm breaking my own workshop rule, and not reading this collection as the work is intended to be read. But really, I think I'm just grasping at straws trying to figure out how it's meant to be ingested.
In the end, I bought this book because of the cover, and also because I'd recently fallen in love again with poetry, with female poets, with contemporaries, and I'd lucked out with all the other collections I'd been getting on a whim--those poets had apparently snuck into my bedroom late at night and drawn the blood from my body as I slept and then used it as their ink; furthermore, they'd done so in such a way whereas I felt the blood-ink on the pages of their books was still being pumped by my heart. And I get how high of a bar I just set for Seuss. And maybe I'm just beginning to realize as I write this review why I didn't connect to this work, and ironically in this disconnect, there is also a connection: I think the poems in this collection remind me of what I was writing when I was a fourteen year old runaway gutter punk scrawling prose-poems in cafes by day and loitering in front of the flourescent beacon of the 7-11 by night. I wrote a lot of pretty words, and some vulgar descriptions, but I didn't yet know how to tie any of it together, nor did I know how to mold a metaphor with what I had in front of me, and as I read Four-Legged Girl, I kept feeling the way I do when I read student work that's not polished yet, and maybe, just maybe, this collection is supposed to feel undone? If that's the point, then bravo!
I could have seen myself enjoying these poems when I was younger, but curiously enough, one of the larger themes I saw evident in the work was that of nostaglia, and yet Seuss's nostalgia, did not catch fire, was not at all contagious. And I'm a sucker for nostalgia, and even when the writer is nostaglic for something I've never before encountered, something I couldn't possible yearn for again since I never knew it to begin with, the right author can pull me with her tugging words, her carefully selected language, in such a way I can empathetically yearn with her as she tries to go home again, but this just didn't happen this time.
Seuss's descriptions of flowers are indeed gorgeous, and I guess there's a layer of melancholy to these homages of violets and irises and poppies because they, like anything beautiful, will eventually wilt. That said, I found myself wondering too often if I'd like the collection more had there been a more selective process for what was included. The flower descriptions I liked also felt redundant--"Didn't I just read about violets?" I'd wonder, and the word "lush" seemed to scar the pages as it was repeated again and again, and yet I could find no reason why it needed to be used so much. I liked the moments where the poems were dressed in the poet's personae's costume jewelry, when they were draped in her vintage rags, and when they reclined upon her velvet-covered chairs rescued from the rain, from the streets, but otherwise, all these poems did was play dress-up, and I didn't know why. The narrative thread of the dead junkie lover never really struck my heart the way I think it was supposed to because I was never given any idea of who this man was before his addiction, before the paper-thin poppy-burst lesions of AIDS took over his body, and Eden fell; in fact, I never really saw the Eden, and so I didn't know what had been lost. But most of all, I think what was lacking were the metaphors, the paradox, the layers I like to peel back on the poems (and the prose) I most love.
I suppose Four-Legged Girl is important in the archival sense that it details 1980s (and 1990s) New York City; a peephole looking back on a time when this city was just as littered with exciting artists, art, and art-making as it was with addicts, and the homeless. If I'd been the editor of the collection, I would have pushed the poet to explore the undercurrents of art, to let her art-making rise to the top as her saviour, her crux, but maybe I'm missing the point entirely: maybe this is not an incident of the Kuntstlerroman, and maybe I'm breaking my own workshop rule, and not reading this collection as the work is intended to be read. But really, I think I'm just grasping at straws trying to figure out how it's meant to be ingested.
In the end, I bought this book because of the cover, and also because I'd recently fallen in love again with poetry, with female poets, with contemporaries, and I'd lucked out with all the other collections I'd been getting on a whim--those poets had apparently snuck into my bedroom late at night and drawn the blood from my body as I slept and then used it as their ink; furthermore, they'd done so in such a way whereas I felt the blood-ink on the pages of their books was still being pumped by my heart. And I get how high of a bar I just set for Seuss. And maybe I'm just beginning to realize as I write this review why I didn't connect to this work, and ironically in this disconnect, there is also a connection: I think the poems in this collection remind me of what I was writing when I was a fourteen year old runaway gutter punk scrawling prose-poems in cafes by day and loitering in front of the flourescent beacon of the 7-11 by night. I wrote a lot of pretty words, and some vulgar descriptions, but I didn't yet know how to tie any of it together, nor did I know how to mold a metaphor with what I had in front of me, and as I read Four-Legged Girl, I kept feeling the way I do when I read student work that's not polished yet, and maybe, just maybe, this collection is supposed to feel undone? If that's the point, then bravo!
Read
November 21, 2023"Some of us claw our way to the bottom,
transcend downward. There at the hub
of the drain, we swirl."
transcend downward. There at the hub
of the drain, we swirl."
October 2, 2024
All occasions
are temporary in our county. A silo in a field
is ho-hum but if it burns it is a temporary
occasion. So many things burn that fires
are in danger of becoming ho-hum.
Only the strange fires count.
The supermarket fire with its exploding
jars of pickles, the outdoor movie-screen fire.
The firehouse fire. In our county
clouds are bags heavy with empties
gathered from parking lots of strip malls
and shut-down pattern facotires.
Soon there will be enough to cash in.
Soon the sky will rain quarters.
Enough for bread and bologna
and squares of American cheese
and cereal shaped like stars. The milk
in the bowl will go pink with the pinkness
of the stars. That will be an occasion.
-- "An occasion is a rare occasion"
Some of us claw our way to the bottom,
transcend downward. There at the hub
of the drain, we swirl.
-- "I went downtown and went down"
What holy trinity is dreaming the dreams I'm dreaming?
Is there a beautiful nostalgia like a breeze lifting the purple funeral-parlor curtains?
Is there a Betty gathering the flotsam of the dynamited Buddhas of Afghanistan?
A Betty, reading the bones of my skull with her small hands?
-- "Is there still a Betty in this new life?"
are temporary in our county. A silo in a field
is ho-hum but if it burns it is a temporary
occasion. So many things burn that fires
are in danger of becoming ho-hum.
Only the strange fires count.
The supermarket fire with its exploding
jars of pickles, the outdoor movie-screen fire.
The firehouse fire. In our county
clouds are bags heavy with empties
gathered from parking lots of strip malls
and shut-down pattern facotires.
Soon there will be enough to cash in.
Soon the sky will rain quarters.
Enough for bread and bologna
and squares of American cheese
and cereal shaped like stars. The milk
in the bowl will go pink with the pinkness
of the stars. That will be an occasion.
-- "An occasion is a rare occasion"
Love was an unmothered thing, for the mother of love was heartless.
-- "Spirea's covered in those clotted blooms"
Some of us claw our way to the bottom,
transcend downward. There at the hub
of the drain, we swirl.
-- "I went downtown and went down"
I strode shoeless
from the rubble with my wicker
hamper of folded clothes
having survived the twister
of my foolishness, the funnel
cloud of my warped desire.
--"Laundromat hit by tornado"
What holy trinity is dreaming the dreams I'm dreaming?
Is there a beautiful nostalgia like a breeze lifting the purple funeral-parlor curtains?
Is there a Betty gathering the flotsam of the dynamited Buddhas of Afghanistan?
A Betty, reading the bones of my skull with her small hands?
-- "Is there still a Betty in this new life?"
August 27, 2016
I love falling in love with a book for the first time. I love, too, that this is one I want to read again and again and I will defend its place on my crowded bookcases to the death! Or to the pain, anyway. Delicious and smart and surprising and exactly the book I needed at exactly the right moment. I adore it when that happens.
December 28, 2015
Tumors, hog snakes, femurs, and velour—a cabinet of curiosities in verse. These poems teem with the kinds of darkness we resist, futilely. One of the very best 2015 collections.
https://www.instagram.com/p/_xW8GLy60...
https://www.instagram.com/p/_xW8GLy60...
September 22, 2016
This is, perhaps, one of the best books of poetry I've read this year--imagistically propelled and compelling, musically muscular, and wrought with the real emotion that makes poetry matter. These poems leap and dazzle.
July 21, 2016
Extravagant word usage.
September 15, 2025
I love how Diane Seuss can capture how vividly unbeautiful life can be sometimes.
Also thinking about: internal rhythm (love how long Seuss's lines can get), specificity (esp. in terms of time and location), unsexy sexiness/grotesqueness of bodies
Also thinking about: internal rhythm (love how long Seuss's lines can get), specificity (esp. in terms of time and location), unsexy sexiness/grotesqueness of bodies
December 21, 2024
Diane Seuss is a legend we are lucky to be alive at the same time as
March 7, 2025
wanted to finish this before italy! more like a 3.5. i wish that it were slightly more cohesive. standouts to me are “either everything is sexual or nothing is” and “i’m full of sadness.” diane seuss really just is so talented - i love her voice so much.
January 30, 2023
queen of line breaks.. Queen of everythig
September 12, 2023
Diane is everything I want in a poet. Her writing encapsulates what it feels like to be in the mind of a woman. She has the ability to take traits we dont typically think of as “attractive” and turn them into pure beauty. Her poems are both dirty and delicate, like tying a pink satin ribbon around greasy, mud caked hair. She gently peels back the lacy stockings of what society wants women to be and exposes the bruised and blood-crusted knees of what they are. She shows the world that we are not more lace than dirty blood, but a beautiful entanglement of both.
February 11, 2020
[...] Desire, sad to say, is sludgy with dead leaves,
fish-rot, twaddle. Its juices are sweet, red-brown,
sassafras root pressed in a vice. It's a greased boar,
typhus-ridden, grunting through the fairgrounds making
the girls scream. Bowling ball, borrowed shoes, score pad,
pencil, sad trophy, burdening my well. Why the poets
lined up behind desire I'll never understand.
fish-rot, twaddle. Its juices are sweet, red-brown,
sassafras root pressed in a vice. It's a greased boar,
typhus-ridden, grunting through the fairgrounds making
the girls scream. Bowling ball, borrowed shoes, score pad,
pencil, sad trophy, burdening my well. Why the poets
lined up behind desire I'll never understand.
July 21, 2018
I first discovered Diane Seuss with her Either everything is sexual, or nothing is... poem which is included in this book. You can say whatever needs said if you use your words well, and she wields them like weapons.
I found myself laughing at her irreverence and her lack of fucks given while giving something better to those paying attention. I felt empowered by these poems. A bit like Sharon Olds with the consideration of how women navigate not just the world around them, but the power from their bodies and beliefs. I don't know how a younger woman would come to this collection, but I loved her sly humor and her sharp, wise memories.
I'm grateful to her for sharing her work and can't wait to see what she does next (actually, I don't have to wait because I bought her latest collection, Still Life with two dead Peacocks and a Girl!)
I found myself laughing at her irreverence and her lack of fucks given while giving something better to those paying attention. I felt empowered by these poems. A bit like Sharon Olds with the consideration of how women navigate not just the world around them, but the power from their bodies and beliefs. I don't know how a younger woman would come to this collection, but I loved her sly humor and her sharp, wise memories.
I'm grateful to her for sharing her work and can't wait to see what she does next (actually, I don't have to wait because I bought her latest collection, Still Life with two dead Peacocks and a Girl!)
October 14, 2015
It is an illusion,
a cheap poet's delusion,
a city most unimaginative,
the rush of emotion demonstrative,
page after page is processed,
store bought adjectives obsessed,
social club smoky, this thing of ours, put out a hit,
the 101 and 202 on "Girl" is that it's not lit.
Chris Roberts
a cheap poet's delusion,
a city most unimaginative,
the rush of emotion demonstrative,
page after page is processed,
store bought adjectives obsessed,
social club smoky, this thing of ours, put out a hit,
the 101 and 202 on "Girl" is that it's not lit.
Chris Roberts
November 20, 2017
Brilliant.
April 8, 2024
I first discovered Diane Seuss in a college poetry class, the piece was called [Intimacy unhinged, unpaddocked me]. I really fell in love with this piece (if you haven’t read it and you are a fan of Seuss’s writing you should check it out), which made me want to look into her other works. I read some of her one-off pieces on the Poetry Foundation but I read her bio and realized she actually has several books. Four-Legged Girl (2015), was the first book title that caught my eye and I’m glad I picked it up.
One of the first pieces that really stuck out to me was “Jump Rope Song”, in the middle of this piece she writes “Born like milk and dies like butter, like batter after you add the eggs,” (Seuss, 8) (the numbers may not reflect correctly for the physical copy of the book since I read it digitally) but that line is super interesting when you break it apart. “Born like milk,” fresh milk in this piece represents her innocence. “and dies like butter,” represents her death. Because fun fact if you didn’t know, we get butter by shaking or beating milk. She dies broken and beaten, that moment just solidifies the fact that she isn’t the same innocent and pure person anymore just because of the struggles she has faced in life.
Before I picked up this book one thing about Seuss’s writing that stuck out to me was beautiful some parts are then a couple of lines later it becomes very grim and haunting, lines like “So let’s toast to the present tense. Vodka and hummingbird nectar, stirred with a finger bone” (Seuss,31). Seuss does a very good job of mixing the sort of grim nature of growing up a female while still having a little bit of fun with it.
In 2024 I think some of the subjects Seuss talks about still apply even though this collection of poems is 9 years old, the female struggle is a sort of perinate fixture in our society that doesn’t seem to fall out of style no matter how much time passes.
While I really enjoyed reading this I do have a couple of issues with this piece. The biggest complaint I have is the pacing, maybe it is because this is more of an artsy piece, and I’m just a very straightforward person when it comes to poetry. As much as I hate to say it, metaphors in poetry go right over my head. Which is unfortunate because I really do enjoy poetry. Some of the metaphors Seuss uses I did under and relate to. The other complaint I had was I didn’t personally notice a theme in this book. Certain pieces like Hub (which is four pieces in one basically) made sense but they were written to be like that.
Overall I'd rate this piece 4 out of 5 stars, It is worth a read if you are into more dark grungy pieces. The reason why I give it 4 out of 5 is because of how disjointed some of the pieces are, typically if a poetry book is disjointed I would rate it lower but part of me thinks it is my fault because of my nature (the others who have written reviews on this book would very much disagree with that opinion but I really did enjoy reading this collection but like I said I’m a very straight forward person).
One of the first pieces that really stuck out to me was “Jump Rope Song”, in the middle of this piece she writes “Born like milk and dies like butter, like batter after you add the eggs,” (Seuss, 8) (the numbers may not reflect correctly for the physical copy of the book since I read it digitally) but that line is super interesting when you break it apart. “Born like milk,” fresh milk in this piece represents her innocence. “and dies like butter,” represents her death. Because fun fact if you didn’t know, we get butter by shaking or beating milk. She dies broken and beaten, that moment just solidifies the fact that she isn’t the same innocent and pure person anymore just because of the struggles she has faced in life.
Before I picked up this book one thing about Seuss’s writing that stuck out to me was beautiful some parts are then a couple of lines later it becomes very grim and haunting, lines like “So let’s toast to the present tense. Vodka and hummingbird nectar, stirred with a finger bone” (Seuss,31). Seuss does a very good job of mixing the sort of grim nature of growing up a female while still having a little bit of fun with it.
In 2024 I think some of the subjects Seuss talks about still apply even though this collection of poems is 9 years old, the female struggle is a sort of perinate fixture in our society that doesn’t seem to fall out of style no matter how much time passes.
While I really enjoyed reading this I do have a couple of issues with this piece. The biggest complaint I have is the pacing, maybe it is because this is more of an artsy piece, and I’m just a very straightforward person when it comes to poetry. As much as I hate to say it, metaphors in poetry go right over my head. Which is unfortunate because I really do enjoy poetry. Some of the metaphors Seuss uses I did under and relate to. The other complaint I had was I didn’t personally notice a theme in this book. Certain pieces like Hub (which is four pieces in one basically) made sense but they were written to be like that.
Overall I'd rate this piece 4 out of 5 stars, It is worth a read if you are into more dark grungy pieces. The reason why I give it 4 out of 5 is because of how disjointed some of the pieces are, typically if a poetry book is disjointed I would rate it lower but part of me thinks it is my fault because of my nature (the others who have written reviews on this book would very much disagree with that opinion but I really did enjoy reading this collection but like I said I’m a very straight forward person).
December 12, 2020
The front: a deep dark pink glossy of a girl with four legs on a chair. The head is invisible, cut-off frame by the neck. She wears an eclectic robe and shows two real legs, socks up to the knees & two doll’s legs socks up to the knees. An intriguing portrait!
The back: “A richly improvisational poetry collection that leads readers through a gallery of incisive and beguiling portraits and landscapes”- Pulitzer Prize finalist citation.
“These poems feel driven by a fury for correction: romantic ideal is delusion, the charisma of the poete maudit a huckster’s sham.” Dana Levin.
“This book is a wise, wild, continuous gift.” Terrance Hayes
“I love everything about these poems. The sound and flurry of them. Their acute, irresistible, female intelligence. Their associative, sometimes hallucinatory swoops. Their infectious, irrepressible, sensual momentum. Their hypersensitive reverence for blazing detail you can’t shake off.” Amy Gerstler.
This volume is the first I bought in many years of a modern poet so my expectations are high, very high. 73 pages with 5 chapters and 10, 9, 9, 9, and 8 poems.
The first poem ‘Jump rope song’ ends with:
Costumes for canaries, for lovebirds, apron for dolls, all
lined up under the mock orange tree, and where is the girl serving
buttermilk in thimbles, is the girl in the blossomhouse gone?
And I am asking myself, what just happened? What did I read, what did I experience with sentences like: “Born like milk and dies like butter, like batter after you add the eggs,” ? I have no clue at all, but it’s thrilling, it’s strange and it’s refreshing. I have to continue reading out loud.
Real raw like, blog posts that have nothing to do with poetry? Or has it? But everything a poet writes is poetry in a way. What about a sentence like: “My bed was cold back then, and I was cold in it.” From Long, long ago I smoked in bed, p.25. It’s immediate, it’s beautiful and it reaches out to me.
I love her style.
Take Page 40, for example:
[…]
Take it a word at a time
Axis
Jazz
Gray
A phrase:
washed away
An image:
your pointed smile was tinged with the sadness
of a great love for me
A city:
Paris
A hemorrhage:
I’ll live a lush life in some small dive
And there I’ll be while I rot with the rest
Of those whose lives are lonely too
And a shot glass half-filled with music.
[…]
It’s beautiful, recognizable, and a manual for interpreting her work? Is it poetry? I vote yes!!
I would recommend this book to anyone with an inquisitive mind and a good nose for what is fresh and lively.
The back: “A richly improvisational poetry collection that leads readers through a gallery of incisive and beguiling portraits and landscapes”- Pulitzer Prize finalist citation.
“These poems feel driven by a fury for correction: romantic ideal is delusion, the charisma of the poete maudit a huckster’s sham.” Dana Levin.
“This book is a wise, wild, continuous gift.” Terrance Hayes
“I love everything about these poems. The sound and flurry of them. Their acute, irresistible, female intelligence. Their associative, sometimes hallucinatory swoops. Their infectious, irrepressible, sensual momentum. Their hypersensitive reverence for blazing detail you can’t shake off.” Amy Gerstler.
This volume is the first I bought in many years of a modern poet so my expectations are high, very high. 73 pages with 5 chapters and 10, 9, 9, 9, and 8 poems.
The first poem ‘Jump rope song’ ends with:
Costumes for canaries, for lovebirds, apron for dolls, all
lined up under the mock orange tree, and where is the girl serving
buttermilk in thimbles, is the girl in the blossomhouse gone?
And I am asking myself, what just happened? What did I read, what did I experience with sentences like: “Born like milk and dies like butter, like batter after you add the eggs,” ? I have no clue at all, but it’s thrilling, it’s strange and it’s refreshing. I have to continue reading out loud.
Real raw like, blog posts that have nothing to do with poetry? Or has it? But everything a poet writes is poetry in a way. What about a sentence like: “My bed was cold back then, and I was cold in it.” From Long, long ago I smoked in bed, p.25. It’s immediate, it’s beautiful and it reaches out to me.
I love her style.
Take Page 40, for example:
[…]
Take it a word at a time
Axis
Jazz
Gray
A phrase:
washed away
An image:
your pointed smile was tinged with the sadness
of a great love for me
A city:
Paris
A hemorrhage:
I’ll live a lush life in some small dive
And there I’ll be while I rot with the rest
Of those whose lives are lonely too
And a shot glass half-filled with music.
[…]
It’s beautiful, recognizable, and a manual for interpreting her work? Is it poetry? I vote yes!!
I would recommend this book to anyone with an inquisitive mind and a good nose for what is fresh and lively.
April 9, 2022
Beauty is over
Beauty was four movies ago, the one in which Vaseline was smeared
on the lens to fog the stars beautiful. Now the rabbits’ nests are empty,
the dog looking self-satisfied. Feasting on the younger versions of ourselves,
that’s what we do. Violets, hunched in their pots on the veranda, rabbit-like
in their stillness. Their pulses still trill, but no one knows. No one need know.
I like my weekends now, unengaged from what is called beauty. No luring.
Perfuming. Pondering my purple eyelids. Their fluttering. I let my hair go
rank, my body smell of body. The UPS man eyes the hair under my arms
as I sign for his heavy box of ashes. He shivers, thanks God his little wife
at home waxes herself smooth, doesn’t lumber or reek like a bear or limp
to the door like some peg-leg, some Igor. An unbeautiful woman is her own
antidote. Her own black granite basilica. Go ahead. Walk in, though you must
enter via her unshaved vulva, oh the vines, the vines, the brambles that break
all axe heads and mastheads! If she is ashamed, she is an implosion of sacred
spaces. If unashamed, she’s a foul explosion of barbells and stars, crucifixes
crosshatching the air black. She’s the Bigger Bang, creation’s recreation,
spewing out purple-tongued trees and animals who glorify in their two-
headedness. Oh little lamb in my red brick hometown museum, one head
gazing west, the other, east, the precious freak who lives at the heart of me
still. All of the new world leaders shall be those born with too many, too much,
the three-eyed, the four-legged, like twelve-fingered Lucille, with her bad
kidneys, bad teeth and bad breasts, her bad hair, her two-headed poetry, my
titanium leg and screws, my stretch marks and wide caesarian scar, my overt
and covert badness, my bad shoes and bare ankles, my badbadbadbad poetry.
Beauty was four movies ago, the one in which Vaseline was smeared
on the lens to fog the stars beautiful. Now the rabbits’ nests are empty,
the dog looking self-satisfied. Feasting on the younger versions of ourselves,
that’s what we do. Violets, hunched in their pots on the veranda, rabbit-like
in their stillness. Their pulses still trill, but no one knows. No one need know.
I like my weekends now, unengaged from what is called beauty. No luring.
Perfuming. Pondering my purple eyelids. Their fluttering. I let my hair go
rank, my body smell of body. The UPS man eyes the hair under my arms
as I sign for his heavy box of ashes. He shivers, thanks God his little wife
at home waxes herself smooth, doesn’t lumber or reek like a bear or limp
to the door like some peg-leg, some Igor. An unbeautiful woman is her own
antidote. Her own black granite basilica. Go ahead. Walk in, though you must
enter via her unshaved vulva, oh the vines, the vines, the brambles that break
all axe heads and mastheads! If she is ashamed, she is an implosion of sacred
spaces. If unashamed, she’s a foul explosion of barbells and stars, crucifixes
crosshatching the air black. She’s the Bigger Bang, creation’s recreation,
spewing out purple-tongued trees and animals who glorify in their two-
headedness. Oh little lamb in my red brick hometown museum, one head
gazing west, the other, east, the precious freak who lives at the heart of me
still. All of the new world leaders shall be those born with too many, too much,
the three-eyed, the four-legged, like twelve-fingered Lucille, with her bad
kidneys, bad teeth and bad breasts, her bad hair, her two-headed poetry, my
titanium leg and screws, my stretch marks and wide caesarian scar, my overt
and covert badness, my bad shoes and bare ankles, my badbadbadbad poetry.
August 21, 2023
People, the ghosts down in North-of-the-South aren’t see-through
They don’t wear nightgowns or whisper or sing
or want hazy things from the ones of us who are living.
They have skin, bones, people. They’re short in stature
and they don’t walk through walls. They come in our houses
by kicking down doors, wearing porkpie hats and smoking
those My Father cigars. Yellow sweat stains
on their sleeveless undershirts, my people. I’m sure
there are other kinds of ghosts other places,
sad angels wearing bloomers and fanning their wings,
but here their faces are made of gristle and their eyes
red from too much Thunderbird. They want to steal
our valuables, mess shit up, drop a match and burn
down the house. I don’t know any other way to say it,
people. They walk right into our kitchens without being invited,
tracking mud, lifting the fish by the tail out of the fryer
and stuffing it in a cloth sack the color of a potato
just pulled out of the ground, and if there was a potato
pulled fresh out of the ground they’d take that too.
Their pee sizzles when it hits the floor. They don’t hear
prayers or heed four-leaf clovers. We have to give
our bodies to the task. I mean we push back, people.
Harder than day labor. Harder than shoving a bull
out of the cow paddock. Two bulls. We have to say
leave my goddamned house. Go, motherfucker.
My fucking house. Shouting while pushing, like breach birth,
or twins. They slap on that corpse-smelling aftershave
and come calling, holding a bouquet of weeds. They want
our whiskey, our gravy, our honey, our combs, our bees.
They don’t wear nightgowns or whisper or sing
or want hazy things from the ones of us who are living.
They have skin, bones, people. They’re short in stature
and they don’t walk through walls. They come in our houses
by kicking down doors, wearing porkpie hats and smoking
those My Father cigars. Yellow sweat stains
on their sleeveless undershirts, my people. I’m sure
there are other kinds of ghosts other places,
sad angels wearing bloomers and fanning their wings,
but here their faces are made of gristle and their eyes
red from too much Thunderbird. They want to steal
our valuables, mess shit up, drop a match and burn
down the house. I don’t know any other way to say it,
people. They walk right into our kitchens without being invited,
tracking mud, lifting the fish by the tail out of the fryer
and stuffing it in a cloth sack the color of a potato
just pulled out of the ground, and if there was a potato
pulled fresh out of the ground they’d take that too.
Their pee sizzles when it hits the floor. They don’t hear
prayers or heed four-leaf clovers. We have to give
our bodies to the task. I mean we push back, people.
Harder than day labor. Harder than shoving a bull
out of the cow paddock. Two bulls. We have to say
leave my goddamned house. Go, motherfucker.
My fucking house. Shouting while pushing, like breach birth,
or twins. They slap on that corpse-smelling aftershave
and come calling, holding a bouquet of weeds. They want
our whiskey, our gravy, our honey, our combs, our bees.
March 9, 2024
3 stars !! ★
— no spoilers included.
so, randomly grabbed this book, didn't even read the synopsis, just vibed with the creepy-cool cover. some bits of these poems hit me, others left me scratching my head—totally challenging to read and decode…
overall, this short poetry collection is all about this woman born way back in the 19th century with four legs. it’s got this fierce, female vibe – beautiful and kinda grimy, you know? i’m into poetry that’s edgy, dark, and a bit like a story. it’s weird, haunting, melancholic, but still kicks with some serious themes.
→ highlights.
⤷ “a horizon is just a girl yawning at the edge”
⤷ “i wanted beauty like that, beauty that turned my dying eyes to cold, heavy jewels,”
⤷ “for hours at a time, that killer whispered in my ear, droning on about his gruesome misdeeds like a mosquito or a husband.”
⤷ “i craved tenderness, it’s that simple.”
⤷ “i’ll live a lush life in some small dive
and there i’ll be while i rot with the rest
of those whose lives are lonely too”
⤷ “sadness overruns me.
i’m bee balm, a swarm at my center.
pollen heavy on the wires of their back legs.
like gold velvet pantaloons.”
— no spoilers included.
𓍢 ִ ໋ “love was an unmothered thing, for the mother of love was heartless.”
so, randomly grabbed this book, didn't even read the synopsis, just vibed with the creepy-cool cover. some bits of these poems hit me, others left me scratching my head—totally challenging to read and decode…
overall, this short poetry collection is all about this woman born way back in the 19th century with four legs. it’s got this fierce, female vibe – beautiful and kinda grimy, you know? i’m into poetry that’s edgy, dark, and a bit like a story. it’s weird, haunting, melancholic, but still kicks with some serious themes.
→ highlights.
⤷ “a horizon is just a girl yawning at the edge”
⤷ “i wanted beauty like that, beauty that turned my dying eyes to cold, heavy jewels,”
⤷ “for hours at a time, that killer whispered in my ear, droning on about his gruesome misdeeds like a mosquito or a husband.”
⤷ “i craved tenderness, it’s that simple.”
⤷ “i’ll live a lush life in some small dive
and there i’ll be while i rot with the rest
of those whose lives are lonely too”
⤷ “sadness overruns me.
i’m bee balm, a swarm at my center.
pollen heavy on the wires of their back legs.
like gold velvet pantaloons.”
June 25, 2024
I was one of those who were completely bowled over by Frank and wondered how I'd missed her till now and since then, I wanted to read another book of hers. This is the one I was able to get a copy of, and the contrast between books is striking.
Even though the sonnet conceit of Frank was more a suggestion than a requirement, where Seuss worked around that 14-line idea in all kinds of ways, the poems in this book barely follow any restraint at all, as they sprawl and fructify.... This is a book of brambles, long-lined poems that go in every which way, talking about her rural poor (?) childhood, the 80s in NYC when she loved a junkie (?), and then her more adult experiences back in MI, some including her son (?). Those question marks are mostly being silly; I do have a firmer sense of the biography, but the poems themselves exceed that kind of single reckoning, in ways that sometimes feel amazing and sometimes exhaust. A good book, and it really makes Frank feel like a considered, sculpted work.
Even though the sonnet conceit of Frank was more a suggestion than a requirement, where Seuss worked around that 14-line idea in all kinds of ways, the poems in this book barely follow any restraint at all, as they sprawl and fructify.... This is a book of brambles, long-lined poems that go in every which way, talking about her rural poor (?) childhood, the 80s in NYC when she loved a junkie (?), and then her more adult experiences back in MI, some including her son (?). Those question marks are mostly being silly; I do have a firmer sense of the biography, but the poems themselves exceed that kind of single reckoning, in ways that sometimes feel amazing and sometimes exhaust. A good book, and it really makes Frank feel like a considered, sculpted work.
September 10, 2021
“…Huge and far from home
and right between the eyes, that’s God’s point of view.” (64)
Reading Seuss’s poetry feels like seeing the world through a new God’s perspective. Bold and brutally honest and beautifully brutal, this collection is both appreciative of life’s ugliness and also unapologetically affronted at anything ever being considered ugly or not.
It’s an, often, disorienting collection. I feel unmoored and slightly unhinged reading this poetry. Like I’m on a high and climbing higher, reaching a peak, a fever pitch always on the rise. I’m too high and not high enough for this collection. It’s vivid and vivacious and daring and brash. Offensive and unsorry in the best ways.
Highly recommend! Especially if you love writing that is somewhat odd and, honestly, weird but profound and provocative, this is the collection for you!
and right between the eyes, that’s God’s point of view.” (64)
Reading Seuss’s poetry feels like seeing the world through a new God’s perspective. Bold and brutally honest and beautifully brutal, this collection is both appreciative of life’s ugliness and also unapologetically affronted at anything ever being considered ugly or not.
It’s an, often, disorienting collection. I feel unmoored and slightly unhinged reading this poetry. Like I’m on a high and climbing higher, reaching a peak, a fever pitch always on the rise. I’m too high and not high enough for this collection. It’s vivid and vivacious and daring and brash. Offensive and unsorry in the best ways.
Highly recommend! Especially if you love writing that is somewhat odd and, honestly, weird but profound and provocative, this is the collection for you!
December 21, 2024
"Some lovelorn rich girl pressing her face to the glass
waiting for the return of her fiancée, a lout, an opera
singer, a tenor. You know he was a tenor. I could hear
her up there, pacing the widow's walk in her red velvet
slippers. I'd lay there smoking menthols. Salems,
a brand born the same year I was, named after
that town out east where jackasses burned witches.
My bed was cold back then, and I was cold in it."
from "Long, long ago I used to smoke in bed"
You won't know where these poems are taking you, but you'd better go, still -- hold your breath and unclench your jaw. Let 'em take you, bright beloved. Let them tear you limb from limb and make you into something stranger, multi-hinged and more honest.
waiting for the return of her fiancée, a lout, an opera
singer, a tenor. You know he was a tenor. I could hear
her up there, pacing the widow's walk in her red velvet
slippers. I'd lay there smoking menthols. Salems,
a brand born the same year I was, named after
that town out east where jackasses burned witches.
My bed was cold back then, and I was cold in it."
from "Long, long ago I used to smoke in bed"
You won't know where these poems are taking you, but you'd better go, still -- hold your breath and unclench your jaw. Let 'em take you, bright beloved. Let them tear you limb from limb and make you into something stranger, multi-hinged and more honest.
June 2, 2022
“It burns my brain, the romance of it. The bitter jazz of it.
Love’s axis painfully turning.
Seed of the deathbed pomegranate in the body’s mouth.
The siren’s song of that seed.
Paris, abandoned. Forsaken. Imagined.
Pink lilies on the café table, petals embellished
with needle marks. I want you, green. Absinthe green.
Nauseous green. Green mint, basil, bile.
I dive into the mush of it, the muck of it. Algae
effervescing. Sparkling foam in a champagne flute.
Dive from the balcony into the lonely rot of it. The lowdown
dive of it. The music of the juke box coin of it, dropping
through the perfumed dark. It burns my brain, romantic
spark of it. Needle turning on the lush black wheel.”
Love’s axis painfully turning.
Seed of the deathbed pomegranate in the body’s mouth.
The siren’s song of that seed.
Paris, abandoned. Forsaken. Imagined.
Pink lilies on the café table, petals embellished
with needle marks. I want you, green. Absinthe green.
Nauseous green. Green mint, basil, bile.
I dive into the mush of it, the muck of it. Algae
effervescing. Sparkling foam in a champagne flute.
Dive from the balcony into the lonely rot of it. The lowdown
dive of it. The music of the juke box coin of it, dropping
through the perfumed dark. It burns my brain, romantic
spark of it. Needle turning on the lush black wheel.”
December 10, 2025
My notes span pages—so many pearls are there to record & hold up to the light. Seuss is a witch! {high praise}.
The aura of the collection is "gothic quotidian". She pins details like deceased insects for a glass case in a curio shop, deeply personal, & yet there are threads of personal recognition the reader can hold on to; also, these super specifics hold an abstract message—subtext like a hidden object puzzle. She really knows how to create a strong image.
"yes, I snapped desire over my knee and arsoned it" (!!)
Beautiful collection felt in the heart. Will be reading more Seuss!
The aura of the collection is "gothic quotidian". She pins details like deceased insects for a glass case in a curio shop, deeply personal, & yet there are threads of personal recognition the reader can hold on to; also, these super specifics hold an abstract message—subtext like a hidden object puzzle. She really knows how to create a strong image.
"yes, I snapped desire over my knee and arsoned it" (!!)
Beautiful collection felt in the heart. Will be reading more Seuss!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews