Atopia

by Sandra Simonds

A Marxist feminist epic

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Atopia grapples with the political climate of the United States manifested through our everyday lives. Sandra Simonds charts the formations and deformations of the social and political through the observations of the poem's speakers, interspersed with the language of social media, news reports, political speech, and the dialogue of friends, children, strangers, and politicians. The Los Angeles Review of Books characterized Simonds's work as "robust, energetic, fanciful, even baroque" and "a necessary counterforce to the structures of gender, power, and labor that impinge upon contemporary life." These poems reflect on what it means to be human, what it means to build communities within a political structure it also opposes.

Tallahassee. Tallahassee. Tallahassee.
Your mist today is incredible
as it settles on this rose garden!
When the largest rose shook off its dew
and looked at me like a cartoon, I smiled back
and promised not to break his neck.
And here we are together again, walking in a park
that honors dead children. A tree planted for each child
on such a mild day in December. And how the dead
children stream through me, scrolls of

Lily! Rose! Bobby!

Kierkegaard says anyone who follows through
on an idea becomes unpopular. And also
that a person needs a system, otherwise you
become mere personality. He must not have
known very many poets, so prone to tyrannical
shifts in mood. Change in the weather is equal to
don't let me go crazy. In the car on the way
to school Charlotte says, "I like to be gentle
with nature because I like nature."

But my mind wouldn't rest, system-less,
as I drive through

Lily! Rose! Bobby!

You're dead, you're dead

Sample

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Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

Published November 5, 2019

About the author

Sandra Simonds grew up in Los Angeles, California. She earned a B.A. in Psychology and Creative Writing at U.C.L.A, an M.F.A. from the University of Montana, and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Florida State University. She is the author of five books of poetry: Further Problems With Pleasure (Forthcoming, University of Akron), Steal It Back (Saturnalia Books, 2015), The Sonnets (Bloof Books, 2014), Mother was a Tragic Girl (Cleveland State University Poetry Center in 2012) and Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2009).

Reviews

[Brianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deep and startling poetry in a contemporary narrative.

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is where they plant cheap pine.
These kinds of trees don't communicate with each other.
This is not the ecology of the forest,
it's the ecology of a tree farm.
They create and destroy themselves for us
with no tie to the future or the past. (18)
[...]
That my language is something between an opera and a factory (22)
[...]
He takes a picture
of me beyond the human-

made limit and in the distance
I sense something cold
and bombed-out

mixed with the wild fruit. (74)
[...]
The nonsense of plant life is a verdant push.
Summer's end redolent of energy,
remarkable as fresh cells pounding out
the syllables of the natural order of our axis
turned on its head like Morse code "I love yous"
in the crescendo of a rare eclipse.

What if I gamified my free time
capitalizing on the diamond
crux of the throat threaded in artificial
intelligence? A cat laps up the matrix
by the swimming pool where the old lady
talks sadly of Betsy
like a reminiscence and glimpses of momentary
fake frost over the great Floridian plains. (79)

[Raven Halle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t feel this way about many things, but if you don’t like Atopia, I think you need to re-evaluate (respectfully). I am a huge and long time fan of Simonds and her work, which is always genius and never navel gazing. Like a book-length song, her words roll off the page and into your brain and your heart and, for me, my lungs. This breathes life into me and I hope to breathe just as much life out. This forced me to rethink what it means to live here, in capitalism, in the U.S., despite and in spite of all the bullshit. I even feel lucky to live in the country that produced such a brilliant mind. Simonds is the poet of our time, and to say anything else is a gross misrepresentation and disservice to both her and yourself.

[Karen Mendoza · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was a colossal disappointment; it was just a long, drawn-out tone-deaf and self-centered monologue. There was no mention of the civil rights movement, and the Black lives matter protests. This book tells the Trump presidency's story through the very narrow lens of a depressed and privileged white lady. The book markets its self to be a "feminist" but sadly falls very short. Just because a woman writes something does not make it feminist; this book lacks intersectionality and is not worth the money or the time I wasted reading it.

[Abbas Alrufaye · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first read the book's title, I immediately began to feel a great deal of disappointment. After reading a few of the poems, I came to the conclusion that Sandra simonds is the most significant living poet. This proves the old adage that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. She is using real-voice versions of many different topics and materials from around the world in her poems. Everyone who reads her poems will understand what it is she is trying to accomplish. This author's book, ATOPIA, is one of my favorites.

[David C Ward]

See my forthcoming review in PNReview

[Amanda Irene · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Hello, trashfire century.” Atopia is an (anti-)ode to the madness, farce, beauty and brutality of 21st-century America. Simonds is a poet for this age.

[Lillie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have decorated my walls with these words. They are kinda dark but so beautiful and modern in a way that doesn’t ruin poetry

[Jess · Rating 1 out of 5]

The problem with library book sales where the paperbacks are $1 is that sometimes the books are bad.