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The Fix
Proceeding from Hélène Cixous’s charge to “kill the false woman who is preventing the live one from breathing,” The Fix forges that woman’s reckoning with her violent past, with her sexuality, and with a future unmoored from the trappings of domestic life. These poems of lyric beauty and unflinching candor negotiate the terrain of contradictory desire—often to darkly comedic effect. In encounters with strangers in dive bars and on highway shoulders, and through ekphrastic engagement with visionaries like William Blake, José Clemente Orozco, and the Talking Heads, this book seeks the real beneath the dissembling surface. Here, nothing is fixed , but grace arrives by diving into the complicated past in order to find a way to live, now. “Woman Seated with Thighs Apart” Often I am permitted to return to this kitchen tipsy, pinned to the fridge, to the precise instant the kiss smashed in. When the jaws of night are grinding and the double bed is half asleep the snore beside me syncs to the traffic light, pulsing red, ragged up in the linen curtain. I leak such solicitous sighs to asphalt, slicked with black ice, high beams speed over my body whole while the drugstore weeps its remedy in strident neon throbs— I doubt I’ll make it out. It’s a cold country. It’s the sting of quarantine. It’s my own two hands working deep inside the sheets.
- GenresPoetry
70 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 2018
2 people are currently reading
49 people want to read
About the author
Lisa Wells
13 books124 followersLisa Wells is the author of Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021) and The Fix (2018), winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, Granta, The Believer, N+1, The Iowa Review, at The Poetry Foundation and elsewhere. She lives in Seattle and is an editor for The Volta and Letter Machine Editions.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
April 13, 2018
That was quick which I expected as it's not even a hundred pages.
The Fix is a collection of poems I found as utterly engaging. Once you read a poem, you can't help but be excited or wonder what the poet will talk about in the next poem. All the poems describe moments from the poets's life, but they were vividly but creatively described that only a good poet can do. The poet's language was lyrical, musical but sharp. Lisa Wells certainly not only proves she's a poet but also that her words, her beautiful complex words, can hurt and strike deep too as they spoke of something of truth in her and so it became truth to the readers as well. These poems are haunting and I know i'll reread this soon.
And look at that cover. I loved it..I have to have a hard copy for my shelf as I only read this as an e-copy granted to me by the author and publishers thru Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
PS: this indeed deserve the prize it got. :) :)
The Fix is a collection of poems I found as utterly engaging. Once you read a poem, you can't help but be excited or wonder what the poet will talk about in the next poem. All the poems describe moments from the poets's life, but they were vividly but creatively described that only a good poet can do. The poet's language was lyrical, musical but sharp. Lisa Wells certainly not only proves she's a poet but also that her words, her beautiful complex words, can hurt and strike deep too as they spoke of something of truth in her and so it became truth to the readers as well. These poems are haunting and I know i'll reread this soon.
And look at that cover. I loved it..I have to have a hard copy for my shelf as I only read this as an e-copy granted to me by the author and publishers thru Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
PS: this indeed deserve the prize it got. :) :)
March 26, 2018
These poems are vividly described snapshots about every day life. They are haunting and graphic and will stay with this reader for a while.
May 24, 2018
Disclaimer: Received a free digital copy of the book through Netgalley.
"To endure this
apparatus
all I have to do is last."
This poetry collection thrived on being abstract yet vivid in its use of description in every poem. Every poem was a unique journey, separate from all the others. Admittedly, some flew right over my head but I still very much liked reading the words and trying to decipher what they meant to me.
A perfect break from all insta-poetry I'd say and something I look forward to having on my shelves. Definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to read a confident, bold and exquisite play on words!
Favourites: "Theory of Knowledge", "Saddle Shoes", "Woman Seated With Thighs Apart", "Canis Vulgaris", "Instructions", "Resurrections", "Beast (1 and 5)", "Under the Water, Carry The Water", "We Must Be Coming Down", "State of a Fair", "Winemaking", "Poetry Man".
"To endure this
apparatus
all I have to do is last."
This poetry collection thrived on being abstract yet vivid in its use of description in every poem. Every poem was a unique journey, separate from all the others. Admittedly, some flew right over my head but I still very much liked reading the words and trying to decipher what they meant to me.
A perfect break from all insta-poetry I'd say and something I look forward to having on my shelves. Definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to read a confident, bold and exquisite play on words!
Favourites: "Theory of Knowledge", "Saddle Shoes", "Woman Seated With Thighs Apart", "Canis Vulgaris", "Instructions", "Resurrections", "Beast (1 and 5)", "Under the Water, Carry The Water", "We Must Be Coming Down", "State of a Fair", "Winemaking", "Poetry Man".
October 19, 2017
Full and luscious as a grape before wine-making or a moon before love-making, the poems in The Fix live in a roadside space that’s earthy, sensual, erotic and wild. Lisa Wells writes by feel, shaping, kneading and bending the line the way a potter builds a ceramic vessel from the bottom up, coiling around a central idea until it’s solid, visible and ready to be marveled at.
April 5, 2018
Lisa Wells is a poet who understands language to be elemental: a means of self-immolation. These lyrics sear. Their force is the sort that destroys the false idols that are our prized illusions, our former selves. Wrought of words as ruthless as they are musical, these poems demand to be heard. They afford us one of art's most necessary services: not the bolstering of ego but the dissolution of it. In its place we are left with the ashes of our own mortality, rendered in verse.
May 24, 2025
Fuck yeah!
These poems are like a ransom note if the ransomer was ransoming an odd angle of light. What's beyond the edge, is more edge. They're brittle and fragmented things. They got teeth for days. It's like watching a silent movie but scored it yourself with the delusory of humanity. It's like a hangman clocking his body but exposing his face. It's also impressive how narrative still has affect. It's like telling a story using the dot-ta-dots kids restaurants menus used to have. It's like a pictograph written by successful scores of hail. These poems are like getting a tattoo of yourself. They're enlivening, these spiky things you'd throw your enemies into.
Pardon all of the likes. I'm still a simile, not metaphor, of Language.
These poems are like a ransom note if the ransomer was ransoming an odd angle of light. What's beyond the edge, is more edge. They're brittle and fragmented things. They got teeth for days. It's like watching a silent movie but scored it yourself with the delusory of humanity. It's like a hangman clocking his body but exposing his face. It's also impressive how narrative still has affect. It's like telling a story using the dot-ta-dots kids restaurants menus used to have. It's like a pictograph written by successful scores of hail. These poems are like getting a tattoo of yourself. They're enlivening, these spiky things you'd throw your enemies into.
Pardon all of the likes. I'm still a simile, not metaphor, of Language.
February 20, 2018
I love poetry and when I came across Lisa Well's new poetry collection, I knew I had to read it.
The poems are of different topics. The flow is also different from poem to poem. Sometimes it's slow and smooth, languid in its flow. Other times, it's fast and wild.
I could visualise the scenes the poet describes through her poem. It did take me some time to truly understand what she was trying to speak of but, that's the beauty of poetry, as you keep reading them again and again, the meaning and the thoughts become clear eventually.
The poems are of different topics. The flow is also different from poem to poem. Sometimes it's slow and smooth, languid in its flow. Other times, it's fast and wild.
I could visualise the scenes the poet describes through her poem. It did take me some time to truly understand what she was trying to speak of but, that's the beauty of poetry, as you keep reading them again and again, the meaning and the thoughts become clear eventually.
March 27, 2018
This collection of poetry takes the everyday and turns it on its head, exploring from every angle. I enjoyed this collection because it takes a bit of a risk when it comes to word choice and description, putting in words and phrases that quickly let you understand that you don't know where the next line will be going.
Although it is a quick read, it is definitely something that will linger with you awhile.
*Book provided by NetGalley
Although it is a quick read, it is definitely something that will linger with you awhile.
*Book provided by NetGalley
April 3, 2018
What a book! Wells' lapidary lines peel the paint off of quotidian life to reveal the quiet violence beneath: a trash can is rolled down the driveway by a "grave / valet;" a woman waits in a truck stop among "shotguns / and platicised bass" while local detectives search for a killer and "heavy rigging drags / the aquaduct for evidence." The speakers of these poems are tired, they've "been there," and regard the world with a mix of rapture and the middle finger, trying to reconcile the loss of love and loss of life with the mandates to make love and make art. Each little fix is temporary and the big Fix remains spectral, its final x carved in the air by Wells' sharp blade.
April 18, 2018
***I received an ARC from University of Iowa Press via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.***
The Fix is a collection of poetry from Lisa Wells, which won the 2017 Iowa Poetry Prize. I have a mixed relationship with poetry. I love to read it out loud and savor the rhythms and patterns of words, and I subscribe to the theory that poetry can have a thousand different meanings depending primarily on the reader. This also means that I sometimes miss the "real meaning" of a poem without the background context. However, I've been trying to read more of it this year and to explore some new-to-me authors.
Unrelated to my relationship to poetry, Wells word choice throughout her poems is casual, but her style is abstract. This makes understanding her poems a bit difficult, and I sometimes had trouble following a train of thought from one stanza to another. Overall, her poetry left me with a raw enjoyment of the art but a loss on conclusions about each poem and what she might be trying to convey.
The Fix is a collection of poetry from Lisa Wells, which won the 2017 Iowa Poetry Prize. I have a mixed relationship with poetry. I love to read it out loud and savor the rhythms and patterns of words, and I subscribe to the theory that poetry can have a thousand different meanings depending primarily on the reader. This also means that I sometimes miss the "real meaning" of a poem without the background context. However, I've been trying to read more of it this year and to explore some new-to-me authors.
Unrelated to my relationship to poetry, Wells word choice throughout her poems is casual, but her style is abstract. This makes understanding her poems a bit difficult, and I sometimes had trouble following a train of thought from one stanza to another. Overall, her poetry left me with a raw enjoyment of the art but a loss on conclusions about each poem and what she might be trying to convey.
October 8, 2020
An incredible selection of poetry that almost defies description. Vivid in both descriptions and distractions the poet takes the reader on a wild ride from the shoulder of the road to the backroom of a club. Animalistic and sometimes violent the journey continues unabated.
Sometimes the words turn simple:
A seed sleeps till you put it in the ground.
A seed is a box water opens
~ Resurrections II
Other times the words tend to run deep and the meanings blur. The is captured particularly well in ”State of a Fair” blending meanings and playing both on words and events to create a double vision branching in different directions.
Complex yet beautifully written collection of poetry certainly able to hold the the attention and admiration of the reader. A well-done collection deserving of the Iowa Poetry Prize.
Sometimes the words turn simple:
A seed sleeps till you put it in the ground.
A seed is a box water opens
~ Resurrections II
Other times the words tend to run deep and the meanings blur. The is captured particularly well in ”State of a Fair” blending meanings and playing both on words and events to create a double vision branching in different directions.
Complex yet beautifully written collection of poetry certainly able to hold the the attention and admiration of the reader. A well-done collection deserving of the Iowa Poetry Prize.
May 31, 2018
I really enjoyed this collection. Lisa Wells is not a poet I'm familiar with but I will watch out for her in future. Not every poem struck a chord with me but the ones that did really resonated. Let me quote a few lines:-
"In the park adjacent the crematory there is a toddler hidden in the folds of her stroller. Only her hands are visible kneading the air."
"...there's a wound in me and everyone knows you should never trust what comes to you limping."
"...marching bead by worried bead upon my rosary-"
The language is beautiful and the choices of imagery are just perfect and I recommend this if you are looking for a new poet with a little bit of depth but still accessible.
I was given a copy of this book by Netgalley in return for an honest review.
"In the park adjacent the crematory there is a toddler hidden in the folds of her stroller. Only her hands are visible kneading the air."
"...there's a wound in me and everyone knows you should never trust what comes to you limping."
"...marching bead by worried bead upon my rosary-"
The language is beautiful and the choices of imagery are just perfect and I recommend this if you are looking for a new poet with a little bit of depth but still accessible.
I was given a copy of this book by Netgalley in return for an honest review.
January 12, 2022
I'm reading Believers, and when I saw that Wells is a poet I figured I'd better check out her poetry. Glad I did. Everything here is readable, I'd recommend this volume even to people who don't read much poetry. Clear, direct voice throughout, a voice you're interested in listening to. Often a really simple declarative syntax I liked a lot:
you should never trust
what comes to you limping
-"Resurrections"
October 13, 2018
Very lively detailed descriptions....almost surreal.
January 25, 2018
Though certainly well-written poetry, it just didn't really speak to me personally. I think I just wasn't the right reader, though I definitely enjoyed Lisa Well's skill.
August 19, 2025
still good. better than the last time. saw more
Read
November 10, 2018consumed it real quick in one sitting (lying down). a good distraction.
Read
May 28, 2019"I don't grow, anymore,
by the inch. I gain
ground."
by the inch. I gain
ground."
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews