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The Falls
"The poems in The Falls dive down and emerge with the treasures of a deep interior life. A connection with the idiosyncratic and fiercely passionate poet Charlotte Mew offers a key to Mohn-Slate's appreciation for the wildness that can lurk beneath social oppression, and the necessary freedom of expressive art."
-- APRIL BERNARD, author of Brawl & Jag
"The Falls by Emily Mohn-Slate is a courageous book teeming with honesty and rage. These poems risk writing motherhood in wildly unpopular ways, telling the truth of mother as 'woman, ' mother as 'human.' Mohn-Slate breaks the code of the status quo with slicing precision and line breaks that cut in perfect seams. This feminist voice seethes with desire, like the woman who is drawn to the falls: I wanted/to touch beauty. It was like/a tornado pulled me in. Even while the hand of something immense hangs above, Mohn-Slate breathes a love of all things. She believes anyway, she forges ahead into the red worlds of her beloved Charlotte Mew, her guide beyond the grave, who tells her: Red is the strangest pain to bear. The skillful restraint in the speaker's voice raises the stakes-this is pragmatism over a well of fury. We get the details, but we feel the fire beneath. In the midst of all of this living, Mohn-Slate is a fierce romantic--wanting what's right and real, even as she sees the traps and tangles of the prices paid. She's going in--and we, lucky readers, get to follow her."
-- JAN BEATTY, author of The Body Wars
"In The Falls, Mohn-Slate crafts rooms to play out the large-scale tragedies and the seemingly small moments, and is so very good at finding the place where the two meet, sing out, and then part ways again. With lush and precise language, we're repeatedly faced with the question: how do we live alongside others without disappearing from the world ourselves? Her voice is candid, collected, and surprising. It's a balance we desperately need to help make sense of our lives."
-- SARA GELSTON, author of Odette
"If there was ever a book to show us the utility of poems, their tough uses, their possibilities as tools--as knives or needles--it is The Falls by Emily Mohn-Slate. In this book, she shows us how poems organize and define a life, give it shape and meaning, and how poetry has the power to render cataclysm or disappointment into art. Mohn-Slate is a master-describer, and these poems show us how the lived life with its losses, loves, burdens and joys, when contained in the civilizing bounds of verse, becomes graspable, and the poem becomes something to be taken up and used. This is a startling book and an important and memorable debut."
-- MARK WUNDERLICH, author of God of Nothingness
-- APRIL BERNARD, author of Brawl & Jag
"The Falls by Emily Mohn-Slate is a courageous book teeming with honesty and rage. These poems risk writing motherhood in wildly unpopular ways, telling the truth of mother as 'woman, ' mother as 'human.' Mohn-Slate breaks the code of the status quo with slicing precision and line breaks that cut in perfect seams. This feminist voice seethes with desire, like the woman who is drawn to the falls: I wanted/to touch beauty. It was like/a tornado pulled me in. Even while the hand of something immense hangs above, Mohn-Slate breathes a love of all things. She believes anyway, she forges ahead into the red worlds of her beloved Charlotte Mew, her guide beyond the grave, who tells her: Red is the strangest pain to bear. The skillful restraint in the speaker's voice raises the stakes-this is pragmatism over a well of fury. We get the details, but we feel the fire beneath. In the midst of all of this living, Mohn-Slate is a fierce romantic--wanting what's right and real, even as she sees the traps and tangles of the prices paid. She's going in--and we, lucky readers, get to follow her."
-- JAN BEATTY, author of The Body Wars
"In The Falls, Mohn-Slate crafts rooms to play out the large-scale tragedies and the seemingly small moments, and is so very good at finding the place where the two meet, sing out, and then part ways again. With lush and precise language, we're repeatedly faced with the question: how do we live alongside others without disappearing from the world ourselves? Her voice is candid, collected, and surprising. It's a balance we desperately need to help make sense of our lives."
-- SARA GELSTON, author of Odette
"If there was ever a book to show us the utility of poems, their tough uses, their possibilities as tools--as knives or needles--it is The Falls by Emily Mohn-Slate. In this book, she shows us how poems organize and define a life, give it shape and meaning, and how poetry has the power to render cataclysm or disappointment into art. Mohn-Slate is a master-describer, and these poems show us how the lived life with its losses, loves, burdens and joys, when contained in the civilizing bounds of verse, becomes graspable, and the poem becomes something to be taken up and used. This is a startling book and an important and memorable debut."
-- MARK WUNDERLICH, author of God of Nothingness
- GenresPoetry
100 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2020
1 person is currently reading
26 people want to read
About the author
Emily Mohn-Slate
5 books17 followersEmily Mohn-Slate is the author of THE FALLS, winner of the 2019 New American Poetry Prize and FEED, winner of the 2018 Keystone Chapbook Prize (Seven Kitchens Press). Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Romper, The Adroit Journal, CALYX, New Ohio Review, NELLE, Racked, Muzzle Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere.
She's a Pittsburgh native, but now lives in Los Angeles, where she works as a writer and writing teacher, teaching workshops for the Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University. She also writes the Substack newsletter, Be Where You Are, which explores the intersections of writing and mindfulness. She hosts the Beginner’s Mind interview series with writers, creatives, and practitioners about their creative & mindfulness practices, as well as virtual Ass in Chair Collective meetups to help people focus on their creative work and connect with others for encouragement and accountability. She's a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars.
She's a Pittsburgh native, but now lives in Los Angeles, where she works as a writer and writing teacher, teaching workshops for the Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University. She also writes the Substack newsletter, Be Where You Are, which explores the intersections of writing and mindfulness. She hosts the Beginner’s Mind interview series with writers, creatives, and practitioners about their creative & mindfulness practices, as well as virtual Ass in Chair Collective meetups to help people focus on their creative work and connect with others for encouragement and accountability. She's a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 8, 2020
Emily Mohn-Slate is one of the greatest emerging poets I know, and THE FALLS is a beautiful, often breathtaking, portrait of a woman's life in our times. These poems range from a painful first marriage and its lingering scars to finding new love and becoming a mother. Mohn-Slate's motherhood poems are some of the most revealing of her work and perspective. In "I'm Trying to Write a Joyful Poem" she asks, "why does joy always slide / into darkness?" All along, she juxtaposes the joy of tickling her son with "the collapse of long / love, how even the brightest / glint in the eye / becomes shadow eventually." And possibly a better example is in the poem "Girl on the Street" where she overlays her daughter just learning to walk with overly-sexualized, objectifying comments from men. In the mix are a series of poems written to the obscure poet, Charlotte Mew. In these poems, Mohn-Slate resurrects Mew and her work for a new generation of readers while simultaneously using Mew's life to make revelations about our current time. This collection is engaging and accessible while also working at the highest levels of craft. You will read these poems and only wish there were more.
December 21, 2020
I loved this collection of poems about life as a woman, a mother, a divorcee, a poet, a teacher, a human. Each poem strikes at the core of life as it is lived, what inspires us, what destroys us, and everything in between. I highly recommend!
June 4, 2021
I listened to Emily read some of her poetry on a Zoom reading for Mothers Day. I really enjoyed her poetry!
November 22, 2020
This collection is raw and painful and beautiful to read. Emily Mohn-Slate digs into divorce, illness, love, and motherhood in deeply honest ways and I can’t wait to see the work she puts forth in the future. Buy this book, cherish this book, and keep an eye out for more from Emily!
January 29, 2021
Mohn-Slate takes a scalpel to marriage, loss, motherhood, misogyny, and societal expectations in fierce but accessible poems that explore the nature of joy and fulfillment while telling a moving story. These poems pull no punches, whether Mohn-Slate is considering divorce, new love, or the challenges writers face as they attempt to balance the urgent need to write with the sometimes-shattering demands of bearing and raising children. As she says in her poem “Feed,” “I never meant to be so needed.” I also love her poems about her identification with the under-known late-19th C/early-20th C poet Charlotte Mew, who committed suicide in 1928. "Maybe joy is the real mystery, Mohn-Slate says in her gorgeous final poem in the book, “I’m Trying to Write a Joyful Poem.” This is a memorable collection of poems.
October 23, 2021
Unflinching interior poems infused with the tenderness and ferocity of modern womanhood and motherhood. I love how well these poems read individually as well as in concert together — their ordering is amplifying!
January 4, 2021
Beautiful, honest, no-bullshit meditation on motherhood, marriage, and what it means to be a woman. I loved this book.
January 6, 2023
I know very little about poetry. I have not been divorced, given birth, or experienced the daily insults of being a woman. But I enjoyed reading this book of poems.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews