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Things That Go
Framed by a retelling of the Biblical story of Lot’s wife, who looked back on the destruction of her city and was transformed into a monument of its destruction, Laura Eve Engel’s muscular poems enact a long, unblinking look at symbols of American progress—trains, buildings, the vast American west—to strain against the notion of looking as passive. These poems suggest a constant and powerful movement forward as an antidote to the current moment, and to the heart’s timeless struggles with itself. This ambitious debut wrestles with the ethics of love and loss, and bears witness to our collective experience of limitless looking, reminding us that “the future is coming / and we’re all in it.”
Laura Eve Engel’s supple, alert, dazzling, unpredictable poems are vibrantly alive: they turn and bend in daring and fantastic ways to access to new angles of vision. Things That Go bristles with a verve that works to unsettle “the signage in our minds,” expanding the seeable as these poems bring it unnervingly closer to the sayable. Engel knows “vigilance against the new appearance / of old growth / has never been enough / we must rewrite the ground.” This book is that rewriting.
— Mary Szybist, author of Incarnadine, winner of the 2013 National Book Award
This long anticipated first collection from Laura Eve Engel is a remarkable debut! At its spine Things That Go traffics in the collision of the sacred and the irreverent and paints a landscape of noticing where even static objects perceive deeply. The poems in this book carry such deft attention to sound, image, and sense a reader might get lost in this book for hours. This is a collection to read, reread, and then read aloud to a friend.
– sam sax, author of Bury It
As a touring musician who has spent the better part of the last decade driving circles around the American southwest, I sense a kindred spirit in Laura Eve Engel. Reading Things That Go feels like traversing the desert at high speeds—witnessing a landscape so arresting and singular that it begs you to project the film of your own memory onto it, the heat waves emanating from the highway suggesting a deep reservoir of meaning underneath.
– Jenn Wasner, Wye Oak and Flock of Dimes
These poems exist in an eternal present, where one is continually in a state of waking. The waking is, often—movingly, thrillingly—into love. “First, building the love, which takes time. / Then making good of it, which takes forever.” Wise and open, Things That Go is both knowing, and aware of the risks of knowing.
– Nick Flynn, author of The Reenactments
Laura Eve Engel’s supple, alert, dazzling, unpredictable poems are vibrantly alive: they turn and bend in daring and fantastic ways to access to new angles of vision. Things That Go bristles with a verve that works to unsettle “the signage in our minds,” expanding the seeable as these poems bring it unnervingly closer to the sayable. Engel knows “vigilance against the new appearance / of old growth / has never been enough / we must rewrite the ground.” This book is that rewriting.
— Mary Szybist, author of Incarnadine, winner of the 2013 National Book Award
This long anticipated first collection from Laura Eve Engel is a remarkable debut! At its spine Things That Go traffics in the collision of the sacred and the irreverent and paints a landscape of noticing where even static objects perceive deeply. The poems in this book carry such deft attention to sound, image, and sense a reader might get lost in this book for hours. This is a collection to read, reread, and then read aloud to a friend.
– sam sax, author of Bury It
As a touring musician who has spent the better part of the last decade driving circles around the American southwest, I sense a kindred spirit in Laura Eve Engel. Reading Things That Go feels like traversing the desert at high speeds—witnessing a landscape so arresting and singular that it begs you to project the film of your own memory onto it, the heat waves emanating from the highway suggesting a deep reservoir of meaning underneath.
– Jenn Wasner, Wye Oak and Flock of Dimes
These poems exist in an eternal present, where one is continually in a state of waking. The waking is, often—movingly, thrillingly—into love. “First, building the love, which takes time. / Then making good of it, which takes forever.” Wise and open, Things That Go is both knowing, and aware of the risks of knowing.
– Nick Flynn, author of The Reenactments
- GenresPoetry
136 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 3, 2019
In "Home on the Range," Engel says "Being in love is like almost knowing what is about to happen before you are ripped apart by the sun and its belly." And that's kinda what reading the book feels like-- entering a space of commonality, of "I know exactly what she's talking about! This feeling! I have it too! She has written it! I have been in this place!" and then being taken along somewhere simultaneously expected and unexpected and also sometimes kind of scary but a place I'm eager to explore anyway.
I pulled out my pencil to underline so many things that sometimes it felt pointless-- if you underline a whole poem, it kind of defeats the purpose of the underline, right? Engel alternates between speech that feels real and natural and familiar and totally new, gut-wrenching, heart-stopping turns of phrase I'm sure no one else ever could have come up with. These poems beg to be revisited, and though I might read them differently each time, they still have just as strong of an emotional impact.
I pulled out my pencil to underline so many things that sometimes it felt pointless-- if you underline a whole poem, it kind of defeats the purpose of the underline, right? Engel alternates between speech that feels real and natural and familiar and totally new, gut-wrenching, heart-stopping turns of phrase I'm sure no one else ever could have come up with. These poems beg to be revisited, and though I might read them differently each time, they still have just as strong of an emotional impact.
March 9, 2019
Like we do, the poems in Things That Go live within (and with) the built and natural environments - they are the poems' infrastructure and means of transportation without which things wouldn't be able to go, move, transition, change, or leave. Centered around the story of Lot's Wife, Engel's poems carry with them the difficulty of going, and the consequences of bearing witness. Like an old tree, one catches in many of these poems glimpses of layers where the bark is peeling. And as you would an old tree, you'll want to revisit Engel's poems multiple times to peel them back.
January 17, 2019
A thic poetry collection that moves between Biblical narrative and modern technology like time was just some made-up thing. I usually think poetry collections that go past the 80 page mark are excessive and incohesive, but here it all holds together. There's solidity to this book even as many of its poems remark on the ephemeral qualities of being human and all of the wonderful and cruel things we do in our time here.
September 2, 2019
A compelling collection that finds its heart in the most personal of places. The poems spread themselves so thing that it's often to trace the overall narrative of the theme (and emulation) throughout the book. I also wished for more, more, more of that healthy desert to make an appearance.
July 19, 2020
Read this to write a review. It’s lovely.
Will post link to review when / if it is published.
Will post link to review when / if it is published.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews