Give a Girl Chaos {see what she can do}

by Heidi Seaborn

Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award & Wheelbarrow Prize

Praise for Give Girl Chaos {see what she can do} (C&R Press, 2019):Give a Girl Chaos {see what she can do} is a survival guide for challenging times, written in the language we crave now—poetry. Heidi Seaborn’s stunning debut collection is a lyric guide to harnessing chaos—from a world swirling in terrorism, war, natural disaster to the chaos of heart, home, body and family. Through poems that ache with beauty and violence, Give a Girl Chaos {see what she can do} reveals that by controlling chaos, we can achieve resilience, power and ultimately joy.
The poems in Heidi Seaborn’s first book are as concerned with the physical as the metaphysical; the visceral past as the meditative present. Give a Girl Chaos reminds us of how tenuous and shape-shifting this life is, yet how even chaos has redeeming qualities: “[c]haos is the way in.” ~Maggie Smith, Author, Good Bones

Heidi Seaborn’s Give a Girl Chaos (see what she can do) is a startling first collection. Seaborn’s poetry pays homage to the chaotic world we live in—a world replete with love, divorce, death, rebirth, and family secrets— and transforms this chaos into an maelstromic feast of the senses. Give a Girl Chaos sings of hornet nests, butterfly hordes, moths in bed, and the depths of the heart. We travel through the intricacies of girlhood and womanhood, transforming memory. Deftly lyrical, she seeks language as her compass and verbs as her luggage. In this journey, in this world, Seaborn beautifully asks us to build galaxies amidst the havoc: “I see myself raise my son’s finger/to trace the big dipper little dipper/drizzling/honey onto this/and every night.” ~Jane Wong, Author, Overpour

“Seaborn’s poems take us places and expose us to thoughts we’ve never quite seen in a poem before…This is the power that Seaborn has — an eagerness to reveal new ways to see a world that feels as ancient as language itself. We’re glad that she’s, finally, arrived.” ~Seattle Review of Books

“Give a Girl Chaos wields everyday language with immense skill…[the] poems encompass the range of human emotion…masterful…Give a Girl Chaos eloquently and effortlessly exposes the vulnerability and beauty in all of us. “~FOREWORD

“Give a Girl Chaos…a lush poetic choreography of deft and moving lyric-narrative intimations—varied in form, rich in sensual detail, and rife with both harrowing and ecstatic twists of fate, discovery, and human deliberation. Give a Girl Chaos triumphs…Lucky for us, we get to see just what Seaborn can do.” ~POETRY INTERNATIONAL

“A major surprise in Seaborn’s biography is that she’s only been writing for two years. Given her command of form and language, this is hard to believe.” —Tupelo Quarterly

“In this striking collection of pain and joy…readers will discover a hidden gem inside every poem.” ~PANK

“Seaborn is triumphant and resounding about women surviving chaos. She shows us that the girl who has been through chaos can catch the joy in every moment and overflow with love. And she can make powerful art.” -Compulsive Reader

“Accomplished, smart, beautiful and affecting poems…writing at the highest level” ~Jeffrey Levine, Tupelo Press

‘A globetrotting executive turned poet, Heidi Seaborn tells the story of a girl finding her path and a woman, her power through poems that engage even the occasional poetry reader. If you read only one book of poetry this year, make it Give a Girl Chaos (and see what she can do) ~ Pattie Sellers, Founder, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

Published March 15, 2019

About the author

Heidi Seaborn wrote poetry as a teenager then pursued a career as a communications executive, serving as Chief Communications Officer for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the European CEO for a major global communications firm and elsewhere. She moved 27 times, raised three children, divorced, remarried and then after a 40-year hiatus, returned to poetry in 2016. Since then, she’s authored two full-length collections of poetry, including PANK Books 2020 Poetry Award winner An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe (2021), Give a Girl Chaos (C&R Press, 2019) and three chapbooks of poetry including the 2020 Comstock Review Prize Chapbook, Bite Marks (2021), as well as Finding My Way Home (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Once a Diva (dancing girl press, 2021). She’s won or been shortlisted for over two dozen awards. Her poetry and essays have recently appeared in American Poetry Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Best American Poetry, Brevity, Copper Nickel, The Cortland Review, The Financial Times, The Greensboro Review, The Missouri Review, The Slowdown with Tracy K. Smith, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Washington Post and elsewhere. She is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and holds an MFA in Poetry from NYU and a BA from Stanford University. After living all over the world, she now resides in her hometown of Seattle.

Reviews

[Jonelle Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tore through this after hearing this poet read at a writing conference, and it did not disappoint. The chaos in the title is the chaos in all our lives, from the small death of a childhood goldfish to life-changing traumas. Who hasn’t experienced the profound relief of “Waiting in Arrivals” as a loved one comes down the jetway, after a near-miss with a newsworthy disaster? Who hasn’t felt the hornet’s nest moment in “Stung,” while ending a serious relationship, or longed to slip out the back door after years spent with the wrong person, in “How to Run Away”? The poet’s rich life is the basis for the poems in this collection, and I loved that each one is annotated with the events that prompted them. This is a collection I’ll return to again and again, to think more deeply about the ones that really resonated with me.

[Julene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Give a Girl Chaos {see what she can do} is Heidi Seaborn's debut book of poetry. Before I read this book I read her first book, An Insomniac’s Slumber Party With Marilyn Monroe, which I loved. The opening epigraph poem is the title of the book, "Give a Girl Chaos," where she writes, "once a girl who dreamed big/a girl who birthed a universe//imagine what she could do now/a girl who harnesses Chaos/can whip winds into a horde/of butterflies" The first section of the book is about her divorce. In the poem "Stung" she is direct saying to him, ""I don't love you," maybe I never had,//over a birthday dinner. Sunset's glaze/reflected off the gold earrings//he'd bought me in Cairo," This poem is a refreshing jolt of a woman who knows herself.

In the second section, designated by butterflies, not titles, we have poems with notes running down the side of the page: POSTCARD/with place, and date, here she is traveling the world and each poem is designated in this way. Places include: Israel, Tanzania, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Hungry, East Germany (before the wall came down), France, Nepal, Thailand, Mexico, and the US. The final poem in this section is "I Had Travelled Far Enough," an ekphrastic poem based on a piece titled "Nothing Lasts Forever." She was an international CEO traveling the world.

In the next section she introduces early childhood experiences and family. The potent poem “Crash” recounts a car accident on a critical day, in both her mother's and then her voice. She uses repetition well, the mother had news that “Marilyn telling me she’s pregnant/this baby as I climb in my truck/pull out our driveway/head to work this baby/as I run the stop sign/by the Congregational church/this baby/I slam/into a station wagon/this baby/“ We’re in that car feeling the news and the accident, the glass flying.

The next section bring us the remarried woman with her children grown. Another powerful poem that reiterates the flying glass when her daughter was waiting for a friend the day a terrorist bomb went off in the Madrid airport. “rained shards/on my daughter, only waiting/for her friend to arrive,/only waiting/for her friend to arrive/only/waiting.”

And the final two sections portray her now settled and writing life, we have a scrumptious oyster poem with the lesson of how to shuck and the wonder of their taste with “charred bread, arugula salad, cold rosé,”; memories of her father; moments with her new husband such as in the poem “When We Fight,” “…I spit out words that flutter/furiously like gypsy moths,/clutter the air around my face./Their dusty wings powder my hair/before drawing to the light. . . . Eventually, I gather up the broken moths, scatter them like ashes out the window/onto the garden below. He dims the light,/pulls me under the bedding. Limbs/entwined like wisteria vines, our dreams/their fragrant bruised flower.”

Bravo to this well formed first book. It has notes at the back for many of the poems; there is lots here to quench your thirst for a good read. It is a satisfying book of poetry with a large spectrum illustrating the possibilites a women can achieve in a life.

[Page Henkel Chance · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly procured, Ms. Seaborn captures both the mundane and terrifying parts of life and offers it in ways we can all relate. I wanted to read it non stop, cover to cover but forced myself to read each poem slowly so I could absorb the beauty of her words and connect deeply with her emotions! I’m hooked!! Can’t wait to read more!!

[S.J Gathercole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review.

Review of Give a Girl Chaos (See What She Can Do)



Give a Girl Chaos (See What She Can Do) by Heidi Seaburn certainly lived up to its title. Each poem depicts chaos of a different form. Seaburn covers the chaos that ensues from life changes, relationships or even terrorist events and natural disasters - almost everything chaotic makes an appearance in this collection.



And therein lies much of the issue. Seaborn bravely tackles the idea of chaos and the impact it can have on our lives. But the size and breadth of this collection suggest that she would have been better off narrowing her focus to types of chaos that she had experienced.



The poems that were more closely connected to Seaborn's life, such as “How Could We Forget” and “Crash”, had a real emotional impact and resonate with the reader. But many of the other poems are so caught up in the idea of the chaos that it's difficult to engage with them on an emotional level.



Seaborn often extends the theme of chaos into the structure and format of her poems too. While ambitious and clever, it's sometimes too much so and this can make it a little tricky to follow. Perhaps Seaborn’s attempts to show her creative genius adds to the difficulty in connecting with the writer through her work. Too much focus is placed on the cleverness of how chaos can be depicted and not enough is given to the emotional response it often creates.



Great poetry should tap into our emotions and senses, and while Seaborn achieves this in some of her poems (“Crash” and “Waiting in Arrivals” are particularly good examples of this) many of them fall short. It's as though Seaborn herself was a little too distant from her chosen topic to really delve into the senses and emotions of the event she's depicting.



The highlights of Give A Girl Chaos have to be “Crash” and “Waiting in Arrivals”. In both these poems, Seaborn is truly at her best. Both poems are smart and engaging with a sense of realness that is sometimes lacking from other poems in the collection. It's in these two poems that the theme of chaos is really put to its best use. Theme and format, structure and feeling come together in these two poems almost perfectly, and if the rest of the poems in the collection were of the same level, it'd be a stand-out winner.

[Kate Gaskin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Give a Girl Chaos is a gorgeous first book filled with far-flung adventures and intimate observations alike. Seaborn's musical language and lush imagery are pitch-perfect in this book about girlhood, womanhood, and motherhood. Highly recommend.

[Marianne Mersereau · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author successfully transforms accounts of chaotic events into very nice poetry in this moving collection.