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In Which I Play the Runaway
Poetry. Winner of 2015 Barrow Street Book Prize. "I was born with a gift for gall and grit," Rochelle Hurt writes—a line that echoes through every poem in this collection. She spares nothing and bares all that needs baring about family, place, and relationships—how they reflect each other, blurred in tarnished mirrors. With a Sylvia Plath-like abandon and urgency, every single word feels completely necessary; words spoken with a vigor and honesty that are felt in the gut; words that remain lodged in the back of the throat. —Richard Blanco, judge
In her new poetry collection, In Which I Play the Runaway, Rochelle Hurt rewrites everything previously said about place. It’s as if Hurt took a map of America, redrew all the state lines, and saved only the best city names: Aimwell, Nightmute, Neverstill, Honesty. Then she filled those towns with tough beauty and longing, everyday objects and encounters acquiring new weight in a landscape that aches like home while also striking us with its singularity. “As expected, after the wedding, the house / became a cough we lived in, trembling / in the throat of that asthmatic spring,” begins the poem “Self-Portrait in Needmore, Indiana,” which goes on to show us, “The streets stacked and curved like fingers / on a grease-knuckled hand gripping / the waist of our Midwestern dream.” This is an unforgettable book, a vital and compelling voice.
—Mary Biddinger
Textured with the silt of a river that has never been itself twice, In Which I Play the Runaway gifts us the voice of a poet who is not only willing but determined to trouble the conventions of two-dimensional portraiture. Here, fables and futures, memory and mythology, and objects and subjects flicker out of their assigned places in the diorama’s mirror so that we might re-imagine the transformative possibilities of a sense of place: “home is a bullet” the I “swallows again and again,” and from an empty grave, a girl will wake “not saved…but changed.” With a great intentionality of formal range and a voice that haunts its world with its clear minerality and its purpose, Hurt insists on the irreducibility of the daughters, wives, women, and girls who find any concept of home in this book, in which “all the women I’ve been…have never ceased / to believe they exist.” We are lucky to have this book in the world.
—Lo Kwa Mei-en
In her new poetry collection, In Which I Play the Runaway, Rochelle Hurt rewrites everything previously said about place. It’s as if Hurt took a map of America, redrew all the state lines, and saved only the best city names: Aimwell, Nightmute, Neverstill, Honesty. Then she filled those towns with tough beauty and longing, everyday objects and encounters acquiring new weight in a landscape that aches like home while also striking us with its singularity. “As expected, after the wedding, the house / became a cough we lived in, trembling / in the throat of that asthmatic spring,” begins the poem “Self-Portrait in Needmore, Indiana,” which goes on to show us, “The streets stacked and curved like fingers / on a grease-knuckled hand gripping / the waist of our Midwestern dream.” This is an unforgettable book, a vital and compelling voice.
—Mary Biddinger
Textured with the silt of a river that has never been itself twice, In Which I Play the Runaway gifts us the voice of a poet who is not only willing but determined to trouble the conventions of two-dimensional portraiture. Here, fables and futures, memory and mythology, and objects and subjects flicker out of their assigned places in the diorama’s mirror so that we might re-imagine the transformative possibilities of a sense of place: “home is a bullet” the I “swallows again and again,” and from an empty grave, a girl will wake “not saved…but changed.” With a great intentionality of formal range and a voice that haunts its world with its clear minerality and its purpose, Hurt insists on the irreducibility of the daughters, wives, women, and girls who find any concept of home in this book, in which “all the women I’ve been…have never ceased / to believe they exist.” We are lucky to have this book in the world.
—Lo Kwa Mei-en
- GenresPoetry
79 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2016
40 people want to read
About the author
Rochelle Hurt
8 books29 followersRochelle Hurt is the author of three books of poetry: The J Girls: A Reality Show (IU Press, 2022), which won the Blue Light Books Prize from Indiana Review; In Which I Play the Runaway (Barrow Street, 2016), which won the Barrow Street Poetry Prize; and The Rusted City: A Novel in Poems (White Pine, 2014), which was selected for the Marie Alexander Series in prose poetry. Her work has been included in the Best New Poets anthology series and she's been awarded prizes and fellowships from Arts & Letters, Hunger Mountain, Poetry International, Vermont Studio Center, Jentel, and Yaddo. Recent poems and essays appear in POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Iowa Review, and elsewhere.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 19, 2017
from In Which I Play the Runaway by Rochelle Hurt:
Poem in Which I Play the Sideshow
Tempting, I know—the white kabob of fire,
the dazzling salad of glass, the sword
poised to be poured down this happy hatch—
all the things you could put in a mouth
but don’t. Well I do—and I have two,
if you want the truth: one for each house
like a kissing booth, both shuttered now.
Who doesn’t want it both ways? A siren-saint.
So it was currency, this crock—an act of girl,
not god. Love was a blade I could eat any day—
two at a time seemed easy. I took them
in vanity, watching myself as if
from across the room, amused.
Eventually, the inevitable: they stuck.
There I was, propped doubly open and singing,
my throat split, my face a peeled lily.
Oh—regret, the crowd whispered.
You see why sealing my lips
to one was out of the question—call it
staying true. I did want to.
[Text note: 5-7 spaces before the final sentence in final line.]
Poem in Which I Play the Sideshow
Tempting, I know—the white kabob of fire,
the dazzling salad of glass, the sword
poised to be poured down this happy hatch—
all the things you could put in a mouth
but don’t. Well I do—and I have two,
if you want the truth: one for each house
like a kissing booth, both shuttered now.
Who doesn’t want it both ways? A siren-saint.
So it was currency, this crock—an act of girl,
not god. Love was a blade I could eat any day—
two at a time seemed easy. I took them
in vanity, watching myself as if
from across the room, amused.
Eventually, the inevitable: they stuck.
There I was, propped doubly open and singing,
my throat split, my face a peeled lily.
Oh—regret, the crowd whispered.
You see why sealing my lips
to one was out of the question—call it
staying true. I did want to.
[Text note: 5-7 spaces before the final sentence in final line.]
October 15, 2019
Confession 1: I know little to nothing about poetry.
Confession 2: I am related to the author and recognize at least a couple of the characters.
Because of confession 1, I would fall flat on my face attempting to summarize this book so I refuse to do it here. And despite of confession 1, I thoroughly enjoyed it. This was a quick read for me, but I imagine I will take longer, slower reads of this as well.
And confession 2 had no bearing on my opinion of this book. If anything, recognizing characters made this a tougher pill to swallow... and I was still comfortably able to give it 5 stars.
Confession 2: I am related to the author and recognize at least a couple of the characters.
Because of confession 1, I would fall flat on my face attempting to summarize this book so I refuse to do it here. And despite of confession 1, I thoroughly enjoyed it. This was a quick read for me, but I imagine I will take longer, slower reads of this as well.
And confession 2 had no bearing on my opinion of this book. If anything, recognizing characters made this a tougher pill to swallow... and I was still comfortably able to give it 5 stars.
July 18, 2017
Hurt's book is one that will haunt you even after you put it down. First because of its beautiful, sensuous, playful, surreal, and eerie imagery. Second because of how these images and narratives braid together--Hurt employs several types of vessels in the collection--a series of self-portraits, a series of poems featuring Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, a few prose pieces that introduce each section. The vessels sing in a complicated chorus--resonating with and across each other.
It is like any good book of poems difficult to translate. You should just read it and then read it again.
It is like any good book of poems difficult to translate. You should just read it and then read it again.
August 12, 2019
This book of poems reads as the story of a young woman and her relationship to men throughout different points in her life. An incredible work of art, Rochelle’s work transports her readers into a vivid space of landscape and deep characterization over and over again, simultaneously inspiring emotions of tranquility and heartbreak.
May 11, 2017
Wasn't as in love with this collection as I was with The Rusted City. Here, the poems are a little more narrative and less prophetic, the images maybe a little too well-worn poem-to-poem. Still, an interesting rumination on the "family" as one knows it or can come to unknow it.
July 11, 2017
This book has haunting images and is enjoyable to read.
September 21, 2019
One of the best poetry books I have ever read. I continue to return to it.
March 14, 2022
This is such a beautiful book from the surface look of the cover art to the ominous undertones of the poems inside. Hurt writes poems worn like Halloween masks--changing faces, perspectives, locations. She places her narrators in different life situations and strange cities. She talks about isolation and community. All in all, these poems play like a symphony filled with repeating patterns of themes. However, each section also adds a pop-song chorus in the poetic adventures of the ultimate runaway: Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. I enjoyed this enjoyed this book. It's one I'll go back and read again ... probably soon.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews