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Circadian
Winner of the 2015 Red Hen Press Nonfiction Award, Circadian is a collection of essays that weaves together personal account with cultural narrative, only to unravel them and explore the brilliant and destructive cycles of who we are. Using poetic language and lyric structures, Clammer dives into her stories of trauma, mental illnesses, and a wide spectrum of relationships in order to understand experience through different of frameworks of thought. Whether it's turning to mathematics to try to solve the problem of an alcoholic father, the history of naming to look at sexism, weather to re-consider trauma, or even grammar as a way to question identity, these -facts- move beyond metaphor, and become new ways to narrate our cyclical ways of being.
- GenresEssaysNonfictionPoetry
176 pages, Paperback
First published October 3, 2017
6 people are currently reading
118 people want to read
About the author
Chelsey Clammer
11 books144 followersChelsey Clammer is the author of BodyHome and winner of the 2015 Red Hen Press Nonfiction Manuscript Award for her essay collection, Circadian. She has been published in The Rumpus, Hobart, McSweeney’s, and Black Warrior Review among others. She is the Essays Editor for The Nervous Breakdown and a volunteer reader for Creative Nonfiction. She teaches creative writing online with WOW! Women on Writing, and received her MFA from Rainier Writing Workshop. www.chelseyclammer.com.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
October 22, 2017
My book rocks. Believe me. I know these things.
December 28, 2017
At the heart of this collection is the story of a young woman learning how to shape her own narrative, literally and metaphorically. Clammer is learning how to select single words for effect, how to employ rhythm in language, and when to be direct and when to choose ambiguity. She is learning how and when to pull the reader close and when to keep her at arm’s length. She does not hide the self-conscious writer at work in this collection. These essays also look at how difficult it is to shape our own narratives beyond the patterns of family, culture, and personal psychology. Each essay stands alone and approaches a subject with a new form of narrative, yet there are intersections and parallels that make them cohere into a book. I personally love the subject of how in shaping narratives we shape our lives. I’m obsessed with this idea, actually. It’s no wonder then that I devoured this book in a day and that I am still thinking about it, carrying it around with me, five days later. I couldn’t write this review right away. I had to let it sit a while, turn it over in my mind. One aspect of this book that fascinated me is how Clammer addresses influence, how our narratives are influenced by others: our parents, the vulnerable people whose stories intersect with ours, the storytellers who we admire for their craft and their bravery. At first, I craved more Chelsey, wondered why she kept hiding her story behind others. But, in the end, that technique was essential to the meaning I made from this finely-crafted collection.
November 13, 2017
A stunning collection from this very talented writer. I've been a fan for years. This book is a treasure!
January 9, 2018
Reviewed by Skyler Boudreau for Reader Views (1/18)
“Circadian” is a collection of twelve essays for adults that make use of both poetic and lyrical structure and mathematical and scientific practices. Through these lenses Chelsey Clammer explores mental illnesses, past stories of trauma, and a series of different relationships.
From the first essay, formatted as a bulleted list, Clammer captures the reader with her unique voice and honest, raw vulnerability. Each of the following pieces are equally enthralling and stay with the reader long after the book has been closed. Collections like these are such personal things that it takes great courage to even write them down, let alone share them with the rest of the world.
Each piece easily hold its own, and putting them together in one volume builds a powerful experience, seamlessly slipping Clammer’s audience into each new lens. In the first piece, she uses mathematics to explain an alcoholic father. Just a few pieces later, in “An Outline for Change,” mathematics reappear, accompanied by an exploration of mitosis to explore her father’s death. Throughout all of her essays Clammer maintains a lyrical voice that adds a bare, haunted feeling to the reading experience. Everything comes together to create a phenomenal piece of literature.
“Circadian” serves as a testament that writing is an effective way of dealing with trauma and tragedy. Reading this work is both emotional and therapeutic. Discovering how another person handles difficult events in their life is fascinating and can be exactly what someone needs to survive their own. Clammer’s essays provide a study into her mind, as well as offers several new ways for the reader to view life.
This is one of those books that everyone should read, if only to understand why it can become a favorite. “Circadian” is a unique work and has successfully garnered my interest in Clammer’s other books. Her essays are everything they should be; engaging, emotional, and very, very human. The reader can truly catch a glimpse of the person behind the words and use those words as a means of connecting with the author. If you read just one essay collection this year, make it “Circadian” by Chelsey Clammer.
“Circadian” is a collection of twelve essays for adults that make use of both poetic and lyrical structure and mathematical and scientific practices. Through these lenses Chelsey Clammer explores mental illnesses, past stories of trauma, and a series of different relationships.
From the first essay, formatted as a bulleted list, Clammer captures the reader with her unique voice and honest, raw vulnerability. Each of the following pieces are equally enthralling and stay with the reader long after the book has been closed. Collections like these are such personal things that it takes great courage to even write them down, let alone share them with the rest of the world.
Each piece easily hold its own, and putting them together in one volume builds a powerful experience, seamlessly slipping Clammer’s audience into each new lens. In the first piece, she uses mathematics to explain an alcoholic father. Just a few pieces later, in “An Outline for Change,” mathematics reappear, accompanied by an exploration of mitosis to explore her father’s death. Throughout all of her essays Clammer maintains a lyrical voice that adds a bare, haunted feeling to the reading experience. Everything comes together to create a phenomenal piece of literature.
“Circadian” serves as a testament that writing is an effective way of dealing with trauma and tragedy. Reading this work is both emotional and therapeutic. Discovering how another person handles difficult events in their life is fascinating and can be exactly what someone needs to survive their own. Clammer’s essays provide a study into her mind, as well as offers several new ways for the reader to view life.
This is one of those books that everyone should read, if only to understand why it can become a favorite. “Circadian” is a unique work and has successfully garnered my interest in Clammer’s other books. Her essays are everything they should be; engaging, emotional, and very, very human. The reader can truly catch a glimpse of the person behind the words and use those words as a means of connecting with the author. If you read just one essay collection this year, make it “Circadian” by Chelsey Clammer.
October 20, 2017
Chelsey Clammer's newest collection of essays is a must-read! Exploring mental illness through a series of essays, Clammer explores various forms for her self discoveries, often making use of lyrical language and hybrid forms. One essay, "Then She Flew Away," about the suicide of a young woman, is worth the five star rating alone.
January 5, 2018
Powerful lyric essays in a variety of forms that all circle around an alcoholic father and the daughter who lives with his legacy of addiction and mental illness. Favorite essays from this collection were "A Striking Resemblance," "Circadian," "Then She Flew Away," "Outline for Change," and "How am II Am a Part of You".
September 14, 2019
One of the best essay collections I've read to date, Clammer's Circadian spoke to me even when I had no similar experiences to share - and when I did, it crept inside me and dragged my own feelings out kicking and screaming.
A must read for any lover of essays.
A must read for any lover of essays.
August 28, 2020
Sooo much going on. Soo much to think about. Will reread.
January 5, 2018
This is a fantastic book and has only increased my interest in essay collections. Beautifully written and an emotional roller coaster. A full review will be available on Reader Views soon.
October 25, 2017
I don't think I've ever read an essay collection that affected me this deeply and emotionally. Circadian is a masterfully written collection of 12 lyric essays that are poetic, bold in subject matter, and razor sharp in wit and language. Clammer uses different frames and structures to analyze her relationship with her father, his alcoholism, and ultimately, his suicide. In "Outline for Change," she uses numerology, geometry, and biology to logistically solve the problem of understanding an alcoholic father. Writers will delight and completely relate to her essay, "I Could Title This Wavering," where she shares her lack of self-confidence as a writer and examines the absurdities of the English language and shares one of her favorite things to do: verb a noun. But this essay in all its literary debate and linguistic myths really has a secret message: it's about a time when the author fainted at the post office because of her eating disorder. And that’s what makes these essays a genius work of art--the form, twist, and introspection of her words, the broadening of context. "Mother Tongue" is an essay every woman writer will fall in love with; it analyzes women’s oppression through the lexicon. "Then She Flew Away" is personally one of my favorite essays of all time because it's about a girl Clammer befriends while working in a transitional residency for homeless youth with drug addiction and mental health issues. This essay and others in the collection provide different perspectives and an honest look at suicide and mental illness that I really appreciated. I strive for this kind of depth in my writing, and it brought me to tears a few times. Highly recommended, Circadian is innovative in form, a deep dive into complex issues, and a powerful book.
January 24, 2018
Circadian
-(of biological processes) recurring naturally on a twenty-four-hour cycle, even in the absence of light fluctuations.
-being, having, characterized by, or occurring in approximately 24-hour periods or cycles (as of biological activity or function) circadian rhythms in activity.
-coined 1959 by German-born biologist Franz Halberg, from Latin circa "about" (alternative form of circum "round about;" see circum-) + diem, accusative singular of dies "day" (from PIE root *dyeu- "to shine"). The original use is in circadian rhythm.
Circadian is a book of rhythms. It's a drum beat of memory, of words, of thematic associations. It is a world all its own, a place to enter and to sense an enveloping force--of lost and found embodiments, of tragedy and playfulness. It creates its own terms and tries to uncreate and recreate and recalibrate narrative, linguistic and neurological synapses.
How do we choose frameworks for understanding and narrativizing loss and love and memory and trauma? How do we make the kinds of connections that turn memory or story into the form of an essay? How do we talk ourselves through and around this process of writing, of making connections? How do we live among the textures of a language that is alive with private as well as collective meanings and musicalities that can be felt outside of and within larger syntactical structures? How do we live among the peculiarity of paragraphs, the strangeness of sentences, the uncanniness of words?
These are just some of the questions, musics, and explorations found in "Circadian". It's quite a stew of mundane and worldly stuff tangled up with poetry and existential detective work.
There are twelve essays in all, connecting in various ways, weaving in and out of intimacy and something cooler and more analytical. But then, but making her process transparent, her quests and her doubts, even the analytical becomes intimate.
These essays are experimental, or feel experimental, in that Clammer seems to be trying different approaches as she goes, searching for ways in and ways out of certain disturbing repetitions, while seeking rhymes and overlaps, circadian rhythms that run through the book as a whole.
It is also a book about coming home. Finding homes within the self and within the essay. (As if each piece is something of a Hansel and Gretel story, where Clammer leaves a trail of crumbs for herself, seeks out truth with a bit of daring, and then works to locate the trail, to find a way back to the beginning.)
-(of biological processes) recurring naturally on a twenty-four-hour cycle, even in the absence of light fluctuations.
-being, having, characterized by, or occurring in approximately 24-hour periods or cycles (as of biological activity or function) circadian rhythms in activity.
-coined 1959 by German-born biologist Franz Halberg, from Latin circa "about" (alternative form of circum "round about;" see circum-) + diem, accusative singular of dies "day" (from PIE root *dyeu- "to shine"). The original use is in circadian rhythm.
Circadian is a book of rhythms. It's a drum beat of memory, of words, of thematic associations. It is a world all its own, a place to enter and to sense an enveloping force--of lost and found embodiments, of tragedy and playfulness. It creates its own terms and tries to uncreate and recreate and recalibrate narrative, linguistic and neurological synapses.
How do we choose frameworks for understanding and narrativizing loss and love and memory and trauma? How do we make the kinds of connections that turn memory or story into the form of an essay? How do we talk ourselves through and around this process of writing, of making connections? How do we live among the textures of a language that is alive with private as well as collective meanings and musicalities that can be felt outside of and within larger syntactical structures? How do we live among the peculiarity of paragraphs, the strangeness of sentences, the uncanniness of words?
These are just some of the questions, musics, and explorations found in "Circadian". It's quite a stew of mundane and worldly stuff tangled up with poetry and existential detective work.
There are twelve essays in all, connecting in various ways, weaving in and out of intimacy and something cooler and more analytical. But then, but making her process transparent, her quests and her doubts, even the analytical becomes intimate.
These essays are experimental, or feel experimental, in that Clammer seems to be trying different approaches as she goes, searching for ways in and ways out of certain disturbing repetitions, while seeking rhymes and overlaps, circadian rhythms that run through the book as a whole.
It is also a book about coming home. Finding homes within the self and within the essay. (As if each piece is something of a Hansel and Gretel story, where Clammer leaves a trail of crumbs for herself, seeks out truth with a bit of daring, and then works to locate the trail, to find a way back to the beginning.)
March 19, 2021
To read Circadian and any of Chelsey Clammer's writing is to dance with vulnerability and boldness together. It's a blast of joy one moment and deep breath of intensity the next, and her utterly uniqe way with words makes me want to shout out in my own voice, now that she has shown the way.
"I un-social-standard-of beauty my body. Dreadlocks. Hairy legs. Armpits, too. And my skin that is no longer thin. I'm learning how to rewrite my letter of acceptance. To encourage before criticizing. And end each thought with a you're doing great and a just keep going. There's always more to write. Always. More to read. Always. Now consider the new shapes of text. The new ways we can read our bodies. Edit. Revolt." YES, a thousand times YES.
"I un-social-standard-of beauty my body. Dreadlocks. Hairy legs. Armpits, too. And my skin that is no longer thin. I'm learning how to rewrite my letter of acceptance. To encourage before criticizing. And end each thought with a you're doing great and a just keep going. There's always more to write. Always. More to read. Always. Now consider the new shapes of text. The new ways we can read our bodies. Edit. Revolt." YES, a thousand times YES.
December 28, 2017
I have Ariel Gore to thank for this; she shared the first essay, and I bought the book immediately after reading it. This is possibly one of the most brilliant collections of essays I've ever read. Chelsey Clammer is a master of language and form. Every piece awed me. Every one. Stunning.
July 2, 2021
Very interesting and compelling read. I've underlined and earmarked pages to which I'll return. As with any collection, some essays are stronger than others, but I know that imagery in several of these will haunt me for a long time.
If you like lyric essays, this is a great read for you.
If you like lyric essays, this is a great read for you.
November 10, 2019
Almost Speechless
January 9, 2021
I loved some of these essays tremendously. And others I didn’t. And that’s okay. This is a heart wrenching little book.
April 9, 2022
I discovered Chelsey in the anthology, A Harp n the Stars:
"I know I can make this all poetic and shit, can find some metaphor to wrap this essay up in - give it some pretty pauses and illuminating illusions. Or, hell, I can allow in the sorrow of the story that I'm not quite sure I want to tell you yet with some soft, long sounds, avoiding words with k, with that hard c, sidestepping the cackle of the stark ch." She had me.
Ordered this book to see if she could keep me. Why yes, yes she can.
e
The interesting thing about this book is that the essays build on each other (unless you read the back cover where Publishers Weekly's blurb sa: ysEach essay builds on the one before..." but that is so tame compared to what is actually going on here), but you don't really know what that means until you're about half way through and start seeing the echoes or even the fuller story. She is a master of controlling words so that you don't know you're reading about, say, an assault (which has been mentioned in passing) because you think you are reading about a relationship.
She is inventive in her formatting and that moves her essays forward. She plays with words and language. She is brutally honest, doesn't mince words, doesn't hold back.
I've since gone and ordered everything I could find by her. I'll let you know if this holds.
reread 4/9/2022
want to put her description of lyric essays here because it's perfect :
Elements of a lyric essay: Metaphor. Research. Bullet points. Pace. Poeticism. Odd concepts. Fragments. Surprising verb and/or noun-turned verb (i.e., a noun verbed). (You can totally Chelsey a sentence.) Surprising structure. Surprising imagery. Unconventional association. Juxtaposition, A declarative and/or witty and/or telling title. Subtle humor via wordplay. Quirky way of looking at and addressing the theme(s). At least one paragraph so elusive that even the author isn't quite sure of what she's trying to say...
You can't prescribe a lyric essay. There is no take two fragments and call your asterisks in the morning of the next chunk of white space offered...if you have no idea what the hell you're actually doing in an essay...lyric the shit out of said essay. Get all hybrid-ish with it...
"I know I can make this all poetic and shit, can find some metaphor to wrap this essay up in - give it some pretty pauses and illuminating illusions. Or, hell, I can allow in the sorrow of the story that I'm not quite sure I want to tell you yet with some soft, long sounds, avoiding words with k, with that hard c, sidestepping the cackle of the stark ch." She had me.
Ordered this book to see if she could keep me. Why yes, yes she can.
e
The interesting thing about this book is that the essays build on each other (unless you read the back cover where Publishers Weekly's blurb sa: ysEach essay builds on the one before..." but that is so tame compared to what is actually going on here), but you don't really know what that means until you're about half way through and start seeing the echoes or even the fuller story. She is a master of controlling words so that you don't know you're reading about, say, an assault (which has been mentioned in passing) because you think you are reading about a relationship.
She is inventive in her formatting and that moves her essays forward. She plays with words and language. She is brutally honest, doesn't mince words, doesn't hold back.
I've since gone and ordered everything I could find by her. I'll let you know if this holds.
reread 4/9/2022
want to put her description of lyric essays here because it's perfect :
Elements of a lyric essay: Metaphor. Research. Bullet points. Pace. Poeticism. Odd concepts. Fragments. Surprising verb and/or noun-turned verb (i.e., a noun verbed). (You can totally Chelsey a sentence.) Surprising structure. Surprising imagery. Unconventional association. Juxtaposition, A declarative and/or witty and/or telling title. Subtle humor via wordplay. Quirky way of looking at and addressing the theme(s). At least one paragraph so elusive that even the author isn't quite sure of what she's trying to say...
You can't prescribe a lyric essay. There is no take two fragments and call your asterisks in the morning of the next chunk of white space offered...if you have no idea what the hell you're actually doing in an essay...lyric the shit out of said essay. Get all hybrid-ish with it...
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews