Beautiful Zero: Poems

by Jennifer Willoughby

“These poems get under your skin and stay there.” —JIM MOORE Incantatory, intimate, and incendiary, the poems in this award-winning debut collection—selected by Dana Levin as the winner of the 2015 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry—are filled with explosive wit and humor like “a knife you don’t see coming.” A kaleidoscopic intelligence flows through Beautiful Zero , embracing forms of culture high and low. Poems about Shark Week and college football sit beside biting critiques of modern war. A series of poems set in a Kaiser Permanente hospital tear into the world of privatized health care while simultaneously charting a story of love in the face of catastrophe. Yet even at her most surreal, Jennifer Willoughby always finds the pulsing heart at the core of the poem. She embraces what she cannot understand about both the world and herself because, after all, “Nothing is as random as they say it is. / You were born the weirdo that you are.”

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 12, 2016

Reviews

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another collection for National Poetry Month.

My favorites:

Country on Fire
"... In the lemony heat, love brings love to whomever
refuses to fall to her knees. In one scenario, we
go down with the plane. In another, we are saved
by a godlike cloud. You are tender. I have
a skeleton. We don’t think any president can
save us. Living in this country is like finding
the weapon that solves the crime. No one claps,
but the wait is over. Blaze on, Florida, blaze on."

Fun House II (here is the first Fun House)

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing is as random as they say it is.
You are born the weirdo that you are.

Willoughby is great - this blend of whimsy and weird that is hard to put down. I loved Beautiful Zero and it is the best poetry collection I've read this year thus far.

Highlights:
How We Love Geography
It Is Not Entirely My Fault
The Properties of Women Are The Properties of Life
Their Joy Is Right In Front of Them
These Bones Will Rise Again
This Year Has My Name on It
House of Sleep

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a wonderful collection. An enthralling blend of humor and the human condition. These poems drive and pull you until they stop you up with a surprising thought or a phrase of wry wit.

I love the perspectives she takes, example: a poem written by a shark during shark week as if it were an actor. Who thinks of that?! Also, it's really good.

[Salvatore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intimate, funny, quirky poems.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jennifer is spot on-- writer excellente'

best first book of poetry I have read in long time & very relate-able~~

[PA]

“I am so busy. I am practicing my new hobby of watching me become someone else. There is so much violence in reconstruction. Every minute is grisly, but I have to participate. I am building what I cannot break.” — Jennifer Willoughby, The Sun is Still a Part of Me

[aurora · Rating 4 out of 5]

without fear, my body would come apart.
look at me go.
just because you know me doesn't mean i am real.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars

There were some really great lines and a few individual poems I really liked (mostly in the third section), but the collection didn't totally work for me. I did appreciate Willoughby's deft wit and interesting allusions.

Book #1 for #TheSealeyChallenge

[Paige Pagnotta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Favorites: The Sun is Still a Part of Me, Fun House II

[pher · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sun its still a part of me

[Krystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

“A reflection can be a manhunt.”

[Alison Sea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed a lot of these. It tackles a lot of different topics in interesting ways.

[MJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Alison Bergblom Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

so beautiful and perfect.

[Laura Carter · Rating 2 out of 5]

“I drink and think: the older I get the fewer ways
there are to hurt myself and still learn something.”

[B.C. Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. If you own one book of poetry it should be this one.