Suture

by Simone Muench, Dean Rader

Poetry. "The endurance of the sonnet sequence over the centuries is in no small measure due to a it is a form that revels both in its fluidity and in its structural exactitude. The sonnet sequence is also apt to engage us because it is typically an expression of solitary yearning, just like the blues. Petrarch longs for his unattainable Laura; Son House laments his dead beloved. In SUTURE, Simone Muench and Dean Rader turn this latter convention of the sonnet sequence on its head, transforming a mode that seems predicated on an essential loneliness into a collaborative effort, one that is rambunctious, wry, companionable, jittery; and, above all, emotionally capacious. Muench and Rader write with an elegant but mysterious synchronicity—like octet and sextet."—David Wojahn

Genres: Poetry

65 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2017

About the author

Simone Muench was raised in Benson, Louisiana and Combs, Arkansas. She is the author of five full-length collections including Lampblack & Ash (Sarabande, 2005), Orange Crush (Sarabande, 2010), and Wolf Centos (Sarabande, August, 2014). Her most recent chapbook Trace received the Black River Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2014). Some of her honors include an NEA fellowship, Illinois Arts Council fellowships, Marianne Moore Prize for Poetry, Kathryn A. Morton Prize for Poetry, PSA’s Bright Lights/Big Verse Contest, and residency fellowships to Yaddo, Artsmith, and VSC. She received her Ph.D from UIC, and is Professor of English at Lewis University where she serves as chief faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review. Collaborative sonnets, written with Dean Rader, are forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, New American Writing, Zyzzyva, Blackbird, and others.

Reviews

[Ana Arredondo]

There are just so many moments of light and stars and dazzle I will go back to again and again. "Light the match of my mouth," "a spark, a spool of light, a petal of liquid fire, a god's fuse," "The Scarlet charm of open mouths, rose clouds," "the wilderness enshrouded in your mouth." Perhaps I'll read it all again now the way you must.

[Daniel Klawitter]

"Can we yoke our flesh to celestial splendor
and still save our beautiful bestial nature?"
---Simone Muench & Dean Radner.

Yes, yes we can. And this book proves it.