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Come the Slumberless To the Land of Nod
Written during the trial for a close friend’s murder, Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod exposes that the whimsical, horrible, and absurd all sit together. In this ambitious collection, Traci Brimhall corresponds with the urges of life and death within herself as she lives through a series of impossibilities: the sentencing of her friend’s murderers, the birth of her child, the death of her mother, divorce, a trip sailing through the Arctic. In lullaby, lyric essay, and always with brutal sincerity, Brimhall examines how beauty and terror live right alongside each other—much like how Nod is both a fictional dreamscape and the place where Cain is exiled for murdering Abel. By plucking at the tensions between life and death, love and hate, truth and obscurity, Brimhall finds what it is that ties opposing themes together; how love and loss are married in grief. Like Eve thrust from Eden, Brimhall is tasked with finding meaning in a world defined by its cruelty. Unrelenting, incisive, and tender, these poems expose beauty in the grotesque and argue that the effort to be good always outweighs the desire to succumb to what is easy.
78 pages, Paperback
First published March 31, 2020
19 people are currently reading
723 people want to read
About the author
Traci Brimhall
20 books115 followersTraci Brimhall is the author of Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton, 2012), winner of the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
August 29, 2020
I’ve read this book four times this summer. I live inside it now.
May 1, 2021
What a gorgeous, gutting collection. This was my first time reading Traci Brimhall's work, and I will definitely be seeking out more. Raw, beautiful, and heartbreaking -- I truly appreciated the way she tackled these poems. Each line feels like a whispered confession. I had so many favorites that I bookmarked. Highly, highly recommend this one.
October 3, 2025
Brutal, beautiful, breathtaking. Heavy with love letters and death letters, grief and loss, ballads and lullabies. Such a tight weaving of myth, biblical references, animal facts, and trying to make sense of a senseless world. Ticked all the boxes for me.
January 6, 2025
"I worshipped the myth I made of you, but I’m off my knees now. I want your hands to become language and make me offer you one thigh at a time. Let it sting loud and sweetly. Let bruise be the proof. Let the smell of your hands."
A beautifully poignant poetry collection that explores themes of grief, love, motherhood, and worship.
This collection surprised me. Normally when I find excerpts online, the other poems end up being less than whichever one had been quoted. That wasn't the case here.
Poetry about Brimhall's friend who was unfortunately murdered—packed a powerful punch. Her love for her son and the various Greek deities she worshipped were apparent, and gut-wrenching to read.
Where you'll find poems about Christianity's God, you'll also find poems about Thanatos and Eros, who Brimhall seems particularly fond of.
Come the Slumberless To the Land of Nod is yearning in its primordial form. Exquisite.
"I'd like to think my doubts prove I hunger for the eternal, but I am wet and Sapphic like any good sinner, all sad cry and gentle astonishment that a body with another body burns brief and desperate as prayer."
"I love you like a vulture loves the careless deer at the roadside."
"Sometimes it’s better to be understood than it is
to be loved."
"He asked if I liked pain or humiliation more. How cruel to make me choose. Darwin described these snowfields—with their tall narrow peaks—as a crowd of penitents. I want to admire the attitude of submission, but I want God’s anger more, want to rouse the Old Testament in me, want to be both hand and cheek. Even when God flooded the world, he loved it. Even when he promised to destroy it again with cleansing fire. That’s the way I want to love."
"Who knows why we were made in God’s likeness but not liked by God."
"I left the religion, but kept the sin and its images."
"Pain and pain+fear are different kinds of suffering. Motherhood is pain+joy. My sleeplessness is love+delirium. All my pains these days are small ones, inconveniences—hangnail, headache, my tender gums bleeding on the white flesh of the apple."
A beautifully poignant poetry collection that explores themes of grief, love, motherhood, and worship.
This collection surprised me. Normally when I find excerpts online, the other poems end up being less than whichever one had been quoted. That wasn't the case here.
Poetry about Brimhall's friend who was unfortunately murdered—packed a powerful punch. Her love for her son and the various Greek deities she worshipped were apparent, and gut-wrenching to read.
Where you'll find poems about Christianity's God, you'll also find poems about Thanatos and Eros, who Brimhall seems particularly fond of.
Come the Slumberless To the Land of Nod is yearning in its primordial form. Exquisite.
"I'd like to think my doubts prove I hunger for the eternal, but I am wet and Sapphic like any good sinner, all sad cry and gentle astonishment that a body with another body burns brief and desperate as prayer."
"I love you like a vulture loves the careless deer at the roadside."
"Sometimes it’s better to be understood than it is
to be loved."
"He asked if I liked pain or humiliation more. How cruel to make me choose. Darwin described these snowfields—with their tall narrow peaks—as a crowd of penitents. I want to admire the attitude of submission, but I want God’s anger more, want to rouse the Old Testament in me, want to be both hand and cheek. Even when God flooded the world, he loved it. Even when he promised to destroy it again with cleansing fire. That’s the way I want to love."
"Who knows why we were made in God’s likeness but not liked by God."
"I left the religion, but kept the sin and its images."
"Pain and pain+fear are different kinds of suffering. Motherhood is pain+joy. My sleeplessness is love+delirium. All my pains these days are small ones, inconveniences—hangnail, headache, my tender gums bleeding on the white flesh of the apple."
October 20, 2020
Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod by Traci Brimhall left me stunned and stricken, overwhelmed and overjoyed. It was exhausting to read, but in a good way.
One thing that makes Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod stand out from other collections I’ve read recently is its structure. Brimhall has woven so many disparate elements into a complex, lush tapestry with lullabies, letters to Eros and Thanatos, and prose murder ballads. Each poem feels as if it must be there, all the pieces fitting together like a tightly interlocking jigsaw puzzle.
As for the poems themselves, let me start with one of my favorites in the book, “How to Sugar for the Atlas.” This poem immediately set me to looking things up. I love the title and wasn’t aware of “sugar” as a verb in the sense it's used here, as a way to attract moths (or that the Atlas is a moth). Then the pleasures of sound in the poem: “sulphur/flutter” and “trees reek with sweetness” and midair/prayer.” And what I consider one of Brimhall's trademarks, her astonishing phrasing: “wing powder like ash/ or the wrong snow,” and “tender amnesia.”
Most every poem in the book resonates, but the poems about the tragedy of her friend’s murder are especially moving. In “Pastoral Before Decomposition,” the title does its work so well in preparing us for the poem that follows, with its juxtaposition of beauty and decay, and I appreciate how the poet wends her way through the piece imagining pastoral images, and how this connects to her discussion in “Murder Ballad in the Arctic” of the way journalists often describe scenes of murdered women in lyrical terms.
I find such delight in Brimhall's amazing facility as a word-slinger, her dead-on aim over and over with fresh metaphors and phrases that truly astonish and “make it new,” such as these:
“The lullaby I wrote on your throat”
“newborn gospels”
“flies corseting a body”
“crows/ hunched on the fencepost like a common row/ of puritans.”
“Your lower lip, a disobedience/ and sweet.”
“combustible muscle”
“the secular gossip/ of cicadas”
Overall, what I love best about Brimhall's writing is how it continually surprises and satisfies at the same time. I end up thinking “Oh, wow!”, followed by “Yes! Of course!”
Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod is Traci Brimhall's finest work so far, and that’s saying a lot.
One thing that makes Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod stand out from other collections I’ve read recently is its structure. Brimhall has woven so many disparate elements into a complex, lush tapestry with lullabies, letters to Eros and Thanatos, and prose murder ballads. Each poem feels as if it must be there, all the pieces fitting together like a tightly interlocking jigsaw puzzle.
As for the poems themselves, let me start with one of my favorites in the book, “How to Sugar for the Atlas.” This poem immediately set me to looking things up. I love the title and wasn’t aware of “sugar” as a verb in the sense it's used here, as a way to attract moths (or that the Atlas is a moth). Then the pleasures of sound in the poem: “sulphur/flutter” and “trees reek with sweetness” and midair/prayer.” And what I consider one of Brimhall's trademarks, her astonishing phrasing: “wing powder like ash/ or the wrong snow,” and “tender amnesia.”
Most every poem in the book resonates, but the poems about the tragedy of her friend’s murder are especially moving. In “Pastoral Before Decomposition,” the title does its work so well in preparing us for the poem that follows, with its juxtaposition of beauty and decay, and I appreciate how the poet wends her way through the piece imagining pastoral images, and how this connects to her discussion in “Murder Ballad in the Arctic” of the way journalists often describe scenes of murdered women in lyrical terms.
I find such delight in Brimhall's amazing facility as a word-slinger, her dead-on aim over and over with fresh metaphors and phrases that truly astonish and “make it new,” such as these:
“The lullaby I wrote on your throat”
“newborn gospels”
“flies corseting a body”
“crows/ hunched on the fencepost like a common row/ of puritans.”
“Your lower lip, a disobedience/ and sweet.”
“combustible muscle”
“the secular gossip/ of cicadas”
Overall, what I love best about Brimhall's writing is how it continually surprises and satisfies at the same time. I end up thinking “Oh, wow!”, followed by “Yes! Of course!”
Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod is Traci Brimhall's finest work so far, and that’s saying a lot.
August 3, 2022
This quiet and heavy collection drips with vulnerability as Brimhall lets the reader wander through a multitude of topics and moods. I like how these poems linger, slowly drifting from one to the next. Relatedly, there was something about Brimhall’s distinct word choices that really worked, as well as the way she used enjambment to avoid ruptures in the flow she created to conjure up a complex world.
Some favorites: “Family Portrait as Lullaby,” “Lullaby on Mount Moriah,” “Love Poem without a Drop of Hyperbole,” “Chthonic Lullaby,” “If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing,” “Sleep Regression Lullaby,” “Thanatopsis,” and “From the Buried Kingdom of Together Still”
Read for the Sealey Challenge.
Some favorites: “Family Portrait as Lullaby,” “Lullaby on Mount Moriah,” “Love Poem without a Drop of Hyperbole,” “Chthonic Lullaby,” “If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing,” “Sleep Regression Lullaby,” “Thanatopsis,” and “From the Buried Kingdom of Together Still”
Read for the Sealey Challenge.
April 18, 2023
This book changed my understanding of and relationship to poetry. At the risk of sounding pretentious af, Come Slumberless left permanent scars.
I live where Traci Brimhall’s murdered friend was found and I recall this case vividly. Maybe this brought it home for me even more so, but I think even without that commonality, this would still be one of my favorite poetry collections of all time.
I live where Traci Brimhall’s murdered friend was found and I recall this case vividly. Maybe this brought it home for me even more so, but I think even without that commonality, this would still be one of my favorite poetry collections of all time.
June 16, 2025
Beautiful and heart wrenching
November 29, 2021
I read this while on a flight up north and it made the book even more powerful and tantalizing. I've taken a poetry class with Brimhall, and I'm grateful I read this book after taking it rather than before, as I would've been incredibly intimidated showing her my writing. Her vulnerability is hypnotizing and it was difficult for me to slow down and drink in all the beauty in her poetry because it's so engaging. I'll definitely reread it more slowly soon to really take it all in and take note of the writing moves Brimhall so thoughtfully placed.
November 18, 2025
Whatever is wrong with her is also wrong with me. It was Corey Van Landingham spring, Diane Seuss summer, and now Traci Brimhall fall.
February 23, 2023
I am fundamentally changed as a person after reading this.
January 14, 2025
There is something about Traci Brimhall's poetry that just leaves you breathless—it is intense, dense, deeply felt, and shows a real command of language and imagery. This collection of poetry is about a constellation of different subjects, with the recurring themes of grief (seem to be reading a lot of those these days), motherhood/parenthood/childhood, and one's relationship with the divine. The state of sleep and sleeplessness functions as an incredibly important conceit within this collection: prayers, lullabies, and wishes perform their utterative work (in the sense of a speech act) in this liminal, the Land of Nod, which reflect so much of our hopes and dreams in the waking world.
July 27, 2020
Traci Brimhall may be my favorite poet. I don't really like choosing favorites, but there you have it.
This had a looser concept than my introduction to her poetry in Our Lady of the Ruins, but still played on clear--seemingly autobiographical--themes. All the things I loved were still here: mysticism, gods, womanhood, and macabre. This played more into womanhood, motherhood, and trauma. It differentiated itself from her past work in that it plays upon the gods of antiquity while still keeping the slumberer--er--reader, anchored in modernity. I continue to need to devour all of Brimhall's words!
This had a looser concept than my introduction to her poetry in Our Lady of the Ruins, but still played on clear--seemingly autobiographical--themes. All the things I loved were still here: mysticism, gods, womanhood, and macabre. This played more into womanhood, motherhood, and trauma. It differentiated itself from her past work in that it plays upon the gods of antiquity while still keeping the slumberer--er--reader, anchored in modernity. I continue to need to devour all of Brimhall's words!
September 30, 2020
“I am three thoughts away from the grave, / two steps away from the open door, / one kiss away from the bridge.”
So begins “Dear Thanatos,” the first poem of Traci Brimhall’s May 2020 collection, Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod. It is a fitting prologue to a book that orbits incessantly the interplay of birth, death, and love, a textual landscape where the lines between each concept are always blurred. This makes sense, for most of the book was written during a paradigm-shifting time in the poet’s life: her divorce, her pregnancy and the birth of her son, and the trial for the murderers of her dear friend. I was expecting, on some level, for these radically different elements to fight against each other, making the poems seem uncomfortably shoved together, but the tension they foster is the wellspring of the book’s wonder.
The connecting force between these elements is, of course, the Land of Nod. In “Murder Ballad in the Arctic,” a piece that toes the line between prose poem and lyric essay, Brimhall writes, “I’ve come here looking for Nod—Cain’s biblical place of exile and the drifting space of dream in lullabies.” Pregnant with her son, she undertook an Arctic sailing voyage, hoping that the land of ice and sea would be a place she could write about her unborn child and her murdered friend. It is the ephemeral, liminal space of Nod that creeps like smoke around every poem, whispering of loss, exile, and birth.
Though Brimhall’s subjects are fairly universal, her delivery is utterly unique, and the juxtaposition of lullabies with “Murder Ballads” and unconventional love poems lends the collection an unhinged charm. However, the true gift that the poems offer is Brimhall’s remarkable gift for expression; her lyricism is imaginative, her word choice always unexpected and sometimes a little kooky. It’s as if when she sat down to write another poem, she unscrewed a jar full of pickled phrases like “seeding heart,” “boondocks opera,” and “anointing my wrist with a paper corsage.”
“Love Poem Without a Drop of Hyperbole” was one of my favorite poems in the collection, one I’ve been returning to again and again after finishing the book. It’s so hard to write a good love poem, and the very best often make liberal use of the unexpected, one of Brimhall’s particular strengths. “I want to kiss you with tongue, with gusto, / with socks still on. I love you like a vulture loves / the careless deer at the roadside. I want to get / all up in you.” It’s difficult, writing about this poem, not to simply quote the entire thing. It’s passionate and messy and more than a little dark, and it’s one of the most genuine love poems I’ve ever read. (Psst… you can read an earlier version of the poem online here.)
The speaker of these poems is spinning lyrics from the Arctic air of exile, from the womb where her unborn son curls within her, from the failure of a passionate marriage, and from the starlit field where her friend was stabbed to death. I’ll leave you with a few lines from “Murder Ballad in the Land of Nod”: “When I imagine his death, he walks through a field and doesn’t feel the men like twin shadows at his back. He recognizes a constellation. He feels the earth give a little with each step. He thinks the word help, and something does.”
So begins “Dear Thanatos,” the first poem of Traci Brimhall’s May 2020 collection, Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod. It is a fitting prologue to a book that orbits incessantly the interplay of birth, death, and love, a textual landscape where the lines between each concept are always blurred. This makes sense, for most of the book was written during a paradigm-shifting time in the poet’s life: her divorce, her pregnancy and the birth of her son, and the trial for the murderers of her dear friend. I was expecting, on some level, for these radically different elements to fight against each other, making the poems seem uncomfortably shoved together, but the tension they foster is the wellspring of the book’s wonder.
The connecting force between these elements is, of course, the Land of Nod. In “Murder Ballad in the Arctic,” a piece that toes the line between prose poem and lyric essay, Brimhall writes, “I’ve come here looking for Nod—Cain’s biblical place of exile and the drifting space of dream in lullabies.” Pregnant with her son, she undertook an Arctic sailing voyage, hoping that the land of ice and sea would be a place she could write about her unborn child and her murdered friend. It is the ephemeral, liminal space of Nod that creeps like smoke around every poem, whispering of loss, exile, and birth.
Though Brimhall’s subjects are fairly universal, her delivery is utterly unique, and the juxtaposition of lullabies with “Murder Ballads” and unconventional love poems lends the collection an unhinged charm. However, the true gift that the poems offer is Brimhall’s remarkable gift for expression; her lyricism is imaginative, her word choice always unexpected and sometimes a little kooky. It’s as if when she sat down to write another poem, she unscrewed a jar full of pickled phrases like “seeding heart,” “boondocks opera,” and “anointing my wrist with a paper corsage.”
“Love Poem Without a Drop of Hyperbole” was one of my favorite poems in the collection, one I’ve been returning to again and again after finishing the book. It’s so hard to write a good love poem, and the very best often make liberal use of the unexpected, one of Brimhall’s particular strengths. “I want to kiss you with tongue, with gusto, / with socks still on. I love you like a vulture loves / the careless deer at the roadside. I want to get / all up in you.” It’s difficult, writing about this poem, not to simply quote the entire thing. It’s passionate and messy and more than a little dark, and it’s one of the most genuine love poems I’ve ever read. (Psst… you can read an earlier version of the poem online here.)
The speaker of these poems is spinning lyrics from the Arctic air of exile, from the womb where her unborn son curls within her, from the failure of a passionate marriage, and from the starlit field where her friend was stabbed to death. I’ll leave you with a few lines from “Murder Ballad in the Land of Nod”: “When I imagine his death, he walks through a field and doesn’t feel the men like twin shadows at his back. He recognizes a constellation. He feels the earth give a little with each step. He thinks the word help, and something does.”
June 13, 2025
my highlighted stanzas:
• We will come slumberless to the Land of Nod and await the slow arrival of forgiveness—blood evanescing from their hands, my heart accepting the clean sadness of grief, God’s indifferent
kiss insulting each of our wounds with its cure.
• Job’s dead children an exposition
for the spectacle of his suffering;
I want to lay my son down
and say, The darkness in me is not
the darkness in you.
• everything ripe refused my mouth.
When I said Come home,
it was a lie, but I believed it. For a year I was light
shaking on the surface of the water,
• On a scale of 1 to 10, the pain dissolves like a Eucharist.
• He is in an inaccessible poetic world, that neither rhetoric, nor imagination the procuress, nor fantasy can penetrate; a flat plain, its nerve centers exposed
• Either way, at least it would be over. That knowledge should have sufficed, but I read on, needing to know. Did my imagination come close to the truth? Can the imagination ever accomplish that?
• Something that ends with light and an instinct to drink from the body you’re held to.
• The judge returns. Everyone rises. The third and last man who helped murder my friend waits with his head down, looking at his hands and listening. He is given life.
• We will come slumberless to the Land of Nod and await the slow arrival of forgiveness—blood evanescing from their hands, my heart accepting the clean sadness of grief, God’s indifferent
kiss insulting each of our wounds with its cure.
• Job’s dead children an exposition
for the spectacle of his suffering;
I want to lay my son down
and say, The darkness in me is not
the darkness in you.
• everything ripe refused my mouth.
When I said Come home,
it was a lie, but I believed it. For a year I was light
shaking on the surface of the water,
• On a scale of 1 to 10, the pain dissolves like a Eucharist.
• He is in an inaccessible poetic world, that neither rhetoric, nor imagination the procuress, nor fantasy can penetrate; a flat plain, its nerve centers exposed
• Either way, at least it would be over. That knowledge should have sufficed, but I read on, needing to know. Did my imagination come close to the truth? Can the imagination ever accomplish that?
• Something that ends with light and an instinct to drink from the body you’re held to.
• The judge returns. Everyone rises. The third and last man who helped murder my friend waits with his head down, looking at his hands and listening. He is given life.
July 18, 2025
There are some interesting poems in this collection, but I didn't feel deeply moved by any of them. It was kind of like reading true crime with a few other tragic events thrown in. She covers a lot of emotional territory in her collection of poems, ballads, and essays – life, death, crime, punishment, forgiveness, loss, grief, to name a few. The impact left me feeling, well…depressed.
The reference to the Land of Nod was one element that stood out. I remembered the poem “Wynken, Blynken and Nod” from childhood but had forgotten that Cain was exiled to the Land of Nod. This was an interesting juxtaposition of a soft, comforting place of a nursery rhyme and a place of exile as a result of Abel’s murder. It aligned with her prose pieces about the murder of her friend, a theme which runs throughout this work.
The reference to the Land of Nod was one element that stood out. I remembered the poem “Wynken, Blynken and Nod” from childhood but had forgotten that Cain was exiled to the Land of Nod. This was an interesting juxtaposition of a soft, comforting place of a nursery rhyme and a place of exile as a result of Abel’s murder. It aligned with her prose pieces about the murder of her friend, a theme which runs throughout this work.
October 14, 2022
“Now my wishes are down to two: Staying alive. And wanting to.”
this was such an impactful collection of poems that explore how one deals with grief and change. i can’t articulate how much i loved this
“Sometimes it is better to be understood than it is to be loved. I believe her because I am better at understanding than I am at feeling.”
“I would not fight back. I was tired of surviving. My heart had outgrown me. It wanted too much love, too much sadness, too many arrows and glasses of wine.”
“Love is such an unreliable savior. What’s so delicate that saying its name breaks it?”
“I judge my love’s depth by how many tears arrive for grief’s rehearsal.”
this was such an impactful collection of poems that explore how one deals with grief and change. i can’t articulate how much i loved this
“Sometimes it is better to be understood than it is to be loved. I believe her because I am better at understanding than I am at feeling.”
“I would not fight back. I was tired of surviving. My heart had outgrown me. It wanted too much love, too much sadness, too many arrows and glasses of wine.”
“Love is such an unreliable savior. What’s so delicate that saying its name breaks it?”
“I judge my love’s depth by how many tears arrive for grief’s rehearsal.”
June 6, 2020
I tend to prefer the older poets quite a bit more than many contemporary ones. But Brinhall is a remarkable exception to my general preferences. She is lyrical, magical, mystifying, honest, brutal, and hopeful all at once. Her poems speak to me of life - life unfiltered in all its pain and anguish as well as it joys, in all its sorrow and struggles as well as its triumphs. I look forward to reading more by this amazing poet but for now all I can say is how amazed I am by this volume and the power of the feelings and emotions she pours into it and evokes from the reader.
March 13, 2024
Beautiful. Showstopping. Outstanding. 1000/10 I loved this collection so much.
It's the kind of poetry that has you whispering the words to yourself because you need to feel how they feel on your tongue. It's delightfully emotional, and raw, and I want to give this author a hug this was so good. I read the entire collection in an hour and half and then immediately loaned it to a friend who I think will love it, but I cannot wait to go back in and really dissect each of these poems when I get the chance.
It's the kind of poetry that has you whispering the words to yourself because you need to feel how they feel on your tongue. It's delightfully emotional, and raw, and I want to give this author a hug this was so good. I read the entire collection in an hour and half and then immediately loaned it to a friend who I think will love it, but I cannot wait to go back in and really dissect each of these poems when I get the chance.
March 29, 2022
Favorite poems:
Crime and Punishment ("little thorn/of fire")
Vive, Vive ("my hand doing the wind's work")
Oh Wonder ("billow in the lung/of night" & "until she was again a tempest")
Fledgling
You Said the Lambs Were Ready ("A lamb is a lamb//is innocence turning into meat.")
I'd like to return to this collection and read the printed book; reading poetry digitally is no way for me to properly study it.
Crime and Punishment ("little thorn/of fire")
Vive, Vive ("my hand doing the wind's work")
Oh Wonder ("billow in the lung/of night" & "until she was again a tempest")
Fledgling
You Said the Lambs Were Ready ("A lamb is a lamb//is innocence turning into meat.")
I'd like to return to this collection and read the printed book; reading poetry digitally is no way for me to properly study it.
January 7, 2024
Awful thing first: The cover image is disgusting and makes me feel physically ill. I actually had to tape an index card over it.
But the rest? The rest of this book is magic. Traci Brimhall is a goddamned national treasure. I'll be returning to this work time and again. Her depth of knowledge; phrasing that takes your breath away; stories that reveal human emotion in surprising and new ways... the pages hold all these treasures.
But the rest? The rest of this book is magic. Traci Brimhall is a goddamned national treasure. I'll be returning to this work time and again. Her depth of knowledge; phrasing that takes your breath away; stories that reveal human emotion in surprising and new ways... the pages hold all these treasures.
July 13, 2021
4.5 stars. Stunning and structurally interesting…and often gutting. I haven’t had such a psychically-difficult reading experience since Cortney Lamar Charleston’s Telepathologies. The subject matter of these poems is heavy but what stayed with me was the intensity and intelligence of Brimhall’s grappling.
April 25, 2020
I miss learning poetry from the brilliant Traci Brimhall. The three classes I took with her were some of my favorites in undergrad. This book of poetry was rich, lush, and heartbreaking. I will be returning to some of these poems for a long time.
May 9, 2020
One of the best books of poetry I have heard in years. Urgency and softness this book has absolutely blown me away. I have found a new favorite poet who has depth that is tender and craft that is full of delicious surprises.
June 27, 2020
I love how the telling happens, very difficult events to tell at that, in this latest collection by Traci Brimhall, how it progresses and took me in, and, of course, that language of hers with its awesome imagery!
January 29, 2021
Reading Traci Brimhall I walk through a forest that is life and I know its sensual, its photographic, its metaphoric self and mine in it. She is a heart that pumps and hands that form and a voice that shapes.
April 14, 2021
The interplay between what the poet is going through and what is imagined through her poetry is very stark and at the same time coy with us.
Her letters to Thanatos and Eros are some of my favorites while her lullabies are haunting and make you think.
Her letters to Thanatos and Eros are some of my favorites while her lullabies are haunting and make you think.
Read
June 9, 2022took me a minute to get into this, but i ended up loving it. the organizing principle seems to be time more than anything else—a series of events (murder, trip to the arctic, birth, death, divorce) that elapse in a very short span of time, and are connected by that alone.
January 17, 2024
Loved it, but there’s a ton going on! Definitely tricky to keep up with parts of the plot, but I enjoyed that aspect of it. Some books are well written enough that their constant change in pace and conflict keeps you guessing!
May 4, 2020
"The body, an instrument. Goodnight, a warning. His mouth
falls open so large in sleep I can see the future swarming."
Brilliant and devastating.
falls open so large in sleep I can see the future swarming."
Brilliant and devastating.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews