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The Clearing: Poems
Finalist for the 2021 Housatonic Book Award in Poetry Winner of the 2019 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, The Clearing is “a lush, lyrical book about a world where women are meant to carry things to safety and men leave decisively” (Henri Cole). Luminous and electric from the first line to the last, Allison Adair’s debut collection navigates the ever-shifting poles of violence and vulnerability with a singular incisiveness and a rich imagination. The women in these poems live in places that have been excavated for gold and precious ores, and they understand the nature of being hollowed out. From the midst of the Civil War to our current era, Adair charts fairy tales that are painfully familiar, never forgetting that violence is often accompanied by tenderness. Here we wonder, “What if this time instead of crumbs the girl drops / teeth, her own, what else does she have”? The Clearing knows the dirt beneath our nails, both alone and as a country, and pries it gently loose until we remember something of who we are, “from before…from a similar injury or kiss.” There is a dark beauty in this work, and Adair is a skilled stenographer of the silences around which we orbit. Described by Henri Cole as “haunting and dirt caked,” her unromantic poems of girlhood, nature, and family linger with an uncommon, unsettling resonance.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Hardcover
First published February 10, 2020
11 people are currently reading
213 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
October 17, 2024
chris gave me this book!! really well written poetry, a bit hard to follow narratively but very lyrical and evocative. interesting themes of trauma and womanhood and loss and beauty. if i understood a poem it felt like i was given a secret...
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June 30, 2021"What if this time instead of crumbs the girl drops / teeth, her own, what else does she have ..." is one hell of a way to start a collection. Lots of rich language throughout: "woozy bags of organs" and "the queer plunger of live birth."
"Honey" (https://www.usi.edu/sir/archived-issu...) is, I think, my favorite poem—though probably because a new lover had me read it to him on our third date. It was early evening, we were high, giddy, and the turn away from sheep gut and bee vomit nearly knocked me off my chair.
"Honey" (https://www.usi.edu/sir/archived-issu...) is, I think, my favorite poem—though probably because a new lover had me read it to him on our third date. It was early evening, we were high, giddy, and the turn away from sheep gut and bee vomit nearly knocked me off my chair.
May 26, 2021
The first poem in this collection is an absolute stunner. Dark, twisty, and weird in the way that the best poems are always weird--like there's only one person in the whole universe who would ever think this way.
August 5, 2023
Note: Been really procrastinating on this but my review got removed by GR mistakenly and I was later told I could re-rate both the audiobook and ebook per GR guidelines outlined here: https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/...
May 30, 2023
What a treat it is to read The Clearing! Finely textured, gritty, rich in imagery and form. All coming together to render place, memories, grief, loss, change through gripping storytelling.
July 15, 2020
how is this collection even real? what darkness or remote clarity or profound sense of being strung all this together? it asks questions and answers them at once—listen.
August 14, 2023
There are some really knock out poems in this collection. Adair has a good handle on unique, surprising, and sometimes grotesquely beautiful imagery. Really enjoyed this one!
April 25, 2021
This book had such imaginative imagery and metaphors. There was so much pain laced in Adair's beautiful words, yet she showed a tremendous appreciation for beauty nature. She found beauty in bear attacks. It was so amazing the gentleness she used to look at harsh subjects.
August 5, 2023
Note: Been really procrastinating on this but my review got removed by GR mistakenly and I was later told I could re-rate both the audiobook and ebook per GR guidelines outlined here: https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/...
August 25, 2020
24/31
This debut, published only on June 9 of this year, contains the masterpiece poem “Flight Theory” which is an astonishing gem of form, voice, and imagery. I am thoroughly overwhelmed by this poem, and liked many others in the book as well. But, seriously. This poem.
#SealeyChallenge #AllisonAdair
The full text of Flight Theory is here, but AROHO didn’t keep the spacing intact, so part of the form is lost:
http://aroomofherownfoundation.org/fl...
This debut, published only on June 9 of this year, contains the masterpiece poem “Flight Theory” which is an astonishing gem of form, voice, and imagery. I am thoroughly overwhelmed by this poem, and liked many others in the book as well. But, seriously. This poem.
#SealeyChallenge #AllisonAdair
The full text of Flight Theory is here, but AROHO didn’t keep the spacing intact, so part of the form is lost:
http://aroomofherownfoundation.org/fl...
May 29, 2023
2.5 stars rounded down*
I actually did like parts of this, but not enough as a whole. A lot of the language is SO "poetry" that it's just nonsense words strung together. I'm sure if you really dissected each line, you'd get more meaning out of it, but I was looking for a more general understanding and appreciation of the poem itself, not analyzing each and every word. Not saying it's not good, just not exactly my cup o' tea.
I actually did like parts of this, but not enough as a whole. A lot of the language is SO "poetry" that it's just nonsense words strung together. I'm sure if you really dissected each line, you'd get more meaning out of it, but I was looking for a more general understanding and appreciation of the poem itself, not analyzing each and every word. Not saying it's not good, just not exactly my cup o' tea.
November 29, 2020
I liked this collection of poems a lot. I’m glad I read it. They grew on me. As I moved through them they took deeper root and I could see a little more clearly. I was impressed with her range. I discovered that she must have roots out here in Colorado, because some of her poems reference the area out here. Her poem about a woman murdered by her husband out here knocked me over.
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January 30, 2023“… this could be
a party, come to think of it, bodies
in red taffeta you can hear swish
and jostle, so don’t need to see
the slow scrape of a tango heel
along weathered wood—or his face
recognizing yours, after all
these years, moving wordlessly
upstairs, two ghosts ready to finish
what was never, in daylight, begun.”
a party, come to think of it, bodies
in red taffeta you can hear swish
and jostle, so don’t need to see
the slow scrape of a tango heel
along weathered wood—or his face
recognizing yours, after all
these years, moving wordlessly
upstairs, two ghosts ready to finish
what was never, in daylight, begun.”
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November 15, 2025What a luxury to read a volume of poetry on a cool Saturday morning!
These poems are visually evocative: rural adolescence in the rust belt and then the dry windswept toughness that comes with life in western Colorado. There is not much joy, but the poems capture the spirit of the time and place in a way that only poetry can.
These poems are visually evocative: rural adolescence in the rust belt and then the dry windswept toughness that comes with life in western Colorado. There is not much joy, but the poems capture the spirit of the time and place in a way that only poetry can.
October 28, 2021
I was going to say—this book has both Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s wide, absorbant, earthward eyes as well as Emily Skaja’s dirt-and-blood-covered hands, and then of course one of the poems is addressed as after Nezhukumatathil.
The spikes concealed in hairbrushes. The respun fables. It’s good.
The spikes concealed in hairbrushes. The respun fables. It’s good.
July 25, 2022
I never seem to enjoy books of poetry as much as other books, so I’m not sure if I’m a great judge of the poems. Some of them seemed odd in a way that put me off a bit. Others were interesting. An easy read.
January 28, 2023
i’m breaking i’m quivering i’m inspired i’m blown the fuck away. truly masterful poetic art. this book holds depth and intelligence and precision and AH it’s so gorgeous. effulgent, sly, full of tooth. everyone must read this.
August 9, 2020
Brilliant, lovely, scathing, and thoughtful. In particular, Adair's skill with line breaks is impressive.
September 21, 2020
I really liked this collection. It is full of smart, carefully wrought poems that deal with the complexities of motherhood/unmotherhood, of being a woman, of being alive.
June 1, 2021
Dark, earthy and lyrical.
November 19, 2022
I thought this was a delightful poetry collection. I especially enjoyed the poems that touched on rurality and Colorado.
March 21, 2024
Very introspective poetry, I especially enjoyed the ones from the Front Range, and could so vividly see the landscapes and the kinds of old mining towns that are found there.
February 19, 2025
I just did not really get this collection but wanted to.
January 8, 2025
What a stunning, tight, surprising collection! Some of my favorite moments:
The world’s getting bigger—truth is hard to see. Try shaking a firefly until he vomits daylight. (Here’s wisdom they don’t print.) The neon gel smeared across your hand can light the way. Go ahead. Reach out for something dark.
You dial someone to insist the worst must be over. Can you hear him tapping? There’s a message in his code: you’re afraid of the wrong catastrophe.
In an attic, a man steps on something soft and tells himself the whole floor was covered with dead birds, so how could he not? But there was only one bird, lying just where the man stepped.
A flag waves lazily across the street. I swear I could hold this wind in my teeth all day.
On the second floor of the world, a tepid bath fills.
The world’s getting bigger—truth is hard to see. Try shaking a firefly until he vomits daylight. (Here’s wisdom they don’t print.) The neon gel smeared across your hand can light the way. Go ahead. Reach out for something dark.
You dial someone to insist the worst must be over. Can you hear him tapping? There’s a message in his code: you’re afraid of the wrong catastrophe.
In an attic, a man steps on something soft and tells himself the whole floor was covered with dead birds, so how could he not? But there was only one bird, lying just where the man stepped.
A flag waves lazily across the street. I swear I could hold this wind in my teeth all day.
On the second floor of the world, a tepid bath fills.
September 7, 2023
A collection of poems about danger, darkness, and the things that lurk. It's a collection of poems about girls, women, and hope.
from Letter to My Niece, in Silverton, Colorado: "Someday you will watch your mother lean on the rim of the sink / to wash dishes in a way she never has before and you will wonder / if she was ever young. I'm here to tell you that cars are so much / quieter than they used to be, at a stop sign you never know whose / turn it is. It wasn't always like that."
from Fine Arts: "Our daugther's brow resists this argument / for the hidden spectrum in white—we've taught her / cat from bird, engine from wheel. But here the petals open / to disclose their secret green, their yellow / blue pink gray."
from Letter to My Niece, in Silverton, Colorado: "Someday you will watch your mother lean on the rim of the sink / to wash dishes in a way she never has before and you will wonder / if she was ever young. I'm here to tell you that cars are so much / quieter than they used to be, at a stop sign you never know whose / turn it is. It wasn't always like that."
from Fine Arts: "Our daugther's brow resists this argument / for the hidden spectrum in white—we've taught her / cat from bird, engine from wheel. But here the petals open / to disclose their secret green, their yellow / blue pink gray."
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews