quitter

by Paula Cisewski

“I’m afraid / that there’s a prison / at the heart of everything.” In quitter, Paula Cisewski quits everything except doubt, the kind of cavernously honest doubt that philosophers crave and that the American Project will need to forge as its lodestone if this planet is to continue. Only someone doing it (Poetry) right could ask, “how can I / possibly be / doing this right,” illuminating the difficult path with humility and care. For what but “an earnest / straining to hear / will return the here / to the here.” quitter slips into the labyrinth for its dark heart, for its beastliness, but it escapes with something far greater: light. “Whatever light there is, that’s what it’s time for.” This is a book about labor and refusal. We the people, more than ever, need poets like Paula to walk and work the labyrinth for us, to refuse easy answers and bring back seeds of resistance. I am so grateful for this timely, intimate, and incandescent book.

Chris Martin, author of The Falling Down Dance,
Becoming Weather and American Music

Genres: Poetry

62 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Paula Cisewski's sixth collection of poems, The Becoming Game, was published by Hanging Loose Press in June 2025. She is also the author of Ceremonies for No Repair (Beauty School Editions, LLC), Quitter​, winner of Diode Editions' Book Prize, The Threatened Everything, Ghost Fargo (selected by Franz Wright for the Nightboat Poetry Prize), Upon Arrival, and several chapbooks, including the lyric prose Misplaced Sinister. She has been awarded fellowships from organizations including the Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, The Oberholtzer Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Her poems and hybrid works appear regularly in literary magazines such as Columba, 32 Poems, Plume, Posit, Brevity; Vinyl; Eleven Eleven; diode; Ping Pong; Matter Monthly; Forklift, OH; A Handsome Journal; Resistance Journal; Blackbird; The BOMBlog; REVOLUTIONesque; Everyday Genius; and failbetter.com. She teaches, both academically and privately, and makes printed matter, collage, and assemblage.


Here's Grace Cavalieri's review of Quitter in The Washington Independent Review of Books:
[http://www.washingtonindependentrevie...]

Here's Jordan Davis's review of Ghost Fargo in the Constant Critic:
[http://www.constantcritic.com/jordan_...]

Here's a first book interview about Upon Arrival with Kate Greenstreet: [http://www.kickingwind.com/022407.html]

Reviews

[Kelsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

So alive with meaning. These poems feel like zippering a jacket on a crisp fall day.