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My Sister's Father
Poetry. "These nearly weaponized poems manifest what it's like to be caught in a trap where family, money, and world have turned against each other, and no one, not even the reader, can touch a single object 'without touching the consequence.' These are poems of singular shipwreck in the wake of a collective crisis that pulls every piece of personal debris into its maelstrom. How do we grieve the gap between the true and the false signatories? Gardiner shows, bravely, deeply, that poetry is how we, is what survives." —Eleni Sikelianos
"Christine Gardiner writes, 'The telling of the seeing broke the crisis.' Here is a book that illumines (and through the alchemy of writing, becomes) the ways the disaster exceeds every limit, even as it simultaneously, constantly arrives. And when the crisis breaks? Language becomes a listening (a sounding veil) where we might, as Gardiner suggests, listen without knowing what for. MY SISTER'S FATHER—lamentation as a field composed of whispers, an underworld dirge, a primer for how to walk through the dark corridor in the empty house during the longest night. The only thing to do now is to read this book again. I catch a glimpse of myself in the I hold onto this book the same way I clutch the Psalter from the abandoned church I found after the storm." —Selah Saterstrom
"The surreal horror of this family constellation (the father is seen stitching 'a match-book car-bomb into my sister's intestines') becomes a kind of trampoline for Gardiner's amazing 'my feet were set in concrete, / and I turned so slowly from one problem / to the other that I was frozen solid / at their center, and the whole world / came into an indolent orbit around me.'
"These leaps of language and imagination take us to 'another country' where 'time comes and goes without a ticket.' Here, in this freedom, 'time is the infinitive.' Hence, with the logic of grammar, the infinite— and even humor becomes 'And you sense the swollen heart / first plummet, then rise / to the still, scarred surface of being, / where impermeable and quivering, / inexplicable as the seraph, / it quacks and buoys like a duck.'
"An amazing and delightful book." —Rosmarie Waldrop
"Christine Gardiner writes, 'The telling of the seeing broke the crisis.' Here is a book that illumines (and through the alchemy of writing, becomes) the ways the disaster exceeds every limit, even as it simultaneously, constantly arrives. And when the crisis breaks? Language becomes a listening (a sounding veil) where we might, as Gardiner suggests, listen without knowing what for. MY SISTER'S FATHER—lamentation as a field composed of whispers, an underworld dirge, a primer for how to walk through the dark corridor in the empty house during the longest night. The only thing to do now is to read this book again. I catch a glimpse of myself in the I hold onto this book the same way I clutch the Psalter from the abandoned church I found after the storm." —Selah Saterstrom
"The surreal horror of this family constellation (the father is seen stitching 'a match-book car-bomb into my sister's intestines') becomes a kind of trampoline for Gardiner's amazing 'my feet were set in concrete, / and I turned so slowly from one problem / to the other that I was frozen solid / at their center, and the whole world / came into an indolent orbit around me.'
"These leaps of language and imagination take us to 'another country' where 'time comes and goes without a ticket.' Here, in this freedom, 'time is the infinitive.' Hence, with the logic of grammar, the infinite— and even humor becomes 'And you sense the swollen heart / first plummet, then rise / to the still, scarred surface of being, / where impermeable and quivering, / inexplicable as the seraph, / it quacks and buoys like a duck.'
"An amazing and delightful book." —Rosmarie Waldrop
- GenresPoetry
64 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2017
15 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 2, 2020
A profound nightmare that hits the limits of language. This is a truly theatric collection that lives up to, and exceeds, its use of “acts.”
December 10, 2017
‘To hear the sea, press your ear to the shell of a spiritual man.’
New York poet Christine Gardiner earned her BA and MFA from Brown University and a PhD from the University of Denver. Christine lives in Brooklyn and is Assistant Professor of the Liberal Arts at the College of New Rochelle, School of New Resources.
Some poets’ works are easily described by the reader who happens upon a vision created by the poet. Not so with Christine Gardiner. Walking through this dangerous realm of raw feelings is not unlike watching a prosection of a cadaver. The observations are emotions and they at times are familiarly recognized mutual pains. She dissects families, eager to expose secrets and frightening implications, but at the same time her verbiage is so remarkably strong that even with the subject matter the poems are luminous.
The thing we uttered scurried
into the night, where they reproduced
like rumors or were murdered
by the indifference of the world
while our secrets unraveled
elegantly and silent as our father –
spinning invisible webs
on the other side of the wall.
My father hazards days in revolution.
He circumvents the pathways
of convention. A man about shaking
hands. Swollen with poverty. Cupping
the bottle, A cat in the garden. My father.
He converses eerily with birds.
As if there were no balance to the powers,
he is present even in his absence.
He makes the seasons statically resolve.
He cultivates his absence in the presence of
a walled city beset by falling walls.
My father sees who needs defending.
A girl caught on the ledge that carves the gardens
of remembered from forgetting.
To absorb the significance and the powerful structure and message of Christine’s poems takes many readings. The time spent with her work is such a strong investment in appreciating creativity.
New York poet Christine Gardiner earned her BA and MFA from Brown University and a PhD from the University of Denver. Christine lives in Brooklyn and is Assistant Professor of the Liberal Arts at the College of New Rochelle, School of New Resources.
Some poets’ works are easily described by the reader who happens upon a vision created by the poet. Not so with Christine Gardiner. Walking through this dangerous realm of raw feelings is not unlike watching a prosection of a cadaver. The observations are emotions and they at times are familiarly recognized mutual pains. She dissects families, eager to expose secrets and frightening implications, but at the same time her verbiage is so remarkably strong that even with the subject matter the poems are luminous.
The thing we uttered scurried
into the night, where they reproduced
like rumors or were murdered
by the indifference of the world
while our secrets unraveled
elegantly and silent as our father –
spinning invisible webs
on the other side of the wall.
My father hazards days in revolution.
He circumvents the pathways
of convention. A man about shaking
hands. Swollen with poverty. Cupping
the bottle, A cat in the garden. My father.
He converses eerily with birds.
As if there were no balance to the powers,
he is present even in his absence.
He makes the seasons statically resolve.
He cultivates his absence in the presence of
a walled city beset by falling walls.
My father sees who needs defending.
A girl caught on the ledge that carves the gardens
of remembered from forgetting.
To absorb the significance and the powerful structure and message of Christine’s poems takes many readings. The time spent with her work is such a strong investment in appreciating creativity.
May 1, 2020
A specific, tender, painful tone sounds through the pages of this chronological collection of enigmatic poems, engulfing my attention so that I consumed them all in one sitting. Some of these metaphorical beauties, I believe, are intentionally, heavily cryptic because to give away the literal truths would, I wonder, hurt certain parties more than the author is willing to allow. We do this. Take on the pain. And yet, it squeaks out, sometimes in lovely treasures such as this.
December 2, 2025
The spiritual sister to Bachmann's Malina
May 21, 2025
The way Gardiner uses language, especially repetition and depersonalization via the lens of 'my sister,' is truly a treat. I did find myself wishing that the crimes and mysteries the poems danced around were made more explicit, but in a way, that's the frustration at revisiting childhood trauma, isn't it?
The world Gardiner's poems take place in is haunted. The book is not long, nor did it need to be.
The world Gardiner's poems take place in is haunted. The book is not long, nor did it need to be.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews