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Nobody's Hell
Poetry. Goetsch collects the particulars of lives well-lived in friendly narrative poems that keep the reader not just reading, but thinking. The self is a ship in a bottle, he writes in a more pensive mode, You want to build it when you're young / but if not, no matter, the self / will be the thing in you that's sad/when the sun goes down. Ninety / percent of it you'll never know / but there are worse things not to know (from Short Song) and these poems help us to know, if not everything, at least more than we knew before entering NOBODY'S HELL. Douglas Goetsch's first full length collection introduces to a wider readership a poet of subtle technical skill and wicked good humor. But even more important than these admirable qualities is Goetsch's compassionate understanding of peoples' lives. ... These poems will 'stay up in the head' of any reader who cares about poetry, and what we do here, in our time.-Robert McDowell. Goetsch was a 1997 recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Poe
- GenresPoetry
74 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
5 people want to read
About the author
Diana Goetsch
12 books47 followersPreviously wrote under the name Douglas Goetsch.
Diana Goetsch is an American poet, author of eight collections, including In America (a 2017 Rattle Chapbook Prize selection), Nameless Boy (2015, Orchises Press) and The Job of Being Everybody, which won the 2004 Cleveland State University Poetry Center Open Competition. Her poems have appeared in leading magazines and anthologies including The New Yorker, Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review and Best American Poetry.
She is also a nonfiction writer and columnist, author of essays on subjects ranging from baseball history to medical ethics to political messaging. From 2015-16 she wrote the “Life in Transition” blog at The American Scholar, where she chronicled her gender transition, along with issues faced by America’s newest visible minority. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Donald Murray Prize for writing pedagogy, and a Pushcart Prize.
For 21 years she was a New York City public school teacher, at Stuyvesant High School, where she taught gifted and mostly immigrant children, and at Passages Academy in the Bronx, where she ran a creative writing program for incarcerated teens.
Diana Goetsch is an American poet, author of eight collections, including In America (a 2017 Rattle Chapbook Prize selection), Nameless Boy (2015, Orchises Press) and The Job of Being Everybody, which won the 2004 Cleveland State University Poetry Center Open Competition. Her poems have appeared in leading magazines and anthologies including The New Yorker, Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review and Best American Poetry.
She is also a nonfiction writer and columnist, author of essays on subjects ranging from baseball history to medical ethics to political messaging. From 2015-16 she wrote the “Life in Transition” blog at The American Scholar, where she chronicled her gender transition, along with issues faced by America’s newest visible minority. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Donald Murray Prize for writing pedagogy, and a Pushcart Prize.
For 21 years she was a New York City public school teacher, at Stuyvesant High School, where she taught gifted and mostly immigrant children, and at Passages Academy in the Bronx, where she ran a creative writing program for incarcerated teens.
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June 11, 2018
"Nobody's Hell" is the collection that introduced me to Goetsch's work, and I've been hooked ever since. Goetsch's honesty, wit, and genuine approach to poetic narrative is nothing short of brilliant, and there is something beautiful about the way that very personal reflections become universal within the pages.
Displaying 1 of 1 review