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CHORUS
Poems that incorporate multiple voices to embrace fragmentation, discord, and plurality.
At a time of simultaneous isolation and interconnection, this book is an inquiry into the edges of the self. Pushing back on capitalist messages of individuality, CHORUS instead seeks the multifaceted self that engages with the radical diversity that characterizes any healthy ecosystem or society. Moving between a remote canyon in New Mexico, the Pacific Northwest, New York City, the virtual world, the past, and the unstable future, the author asks, “Whose afterimage am I?”
The sprawling, celebratory, mourning chorus of this book is the sum of many voices; the words of other writers, poets, and artists are interwoven with the author’s words. This is a celebration of language’s capacity to supersede bodily limits, mortality, and existential loneliness. Daniela Naomi Molnar’s chorus encompasses violence, love, empathy, fear, a burning planet, a pandemic, heartbreak, desire, joy, and grief. Rather than seeking resolution, these poems look through the lens of a fragmented self, dwelling in plurality, discord, and harmony.
CHORUS is the winner of Omnidawn’s 1st /2nd Book Prize, judged by Kazim Ali.
At a time of simultaneous isolation and interconnection, this book is an inquiry into the edges of the self. Pushing back on capitalist messages of individuality, CHORUS instead seeks the multifaceted self that engages with the radical diversity that characterizes any healthy ecosystem or society. Moving between a remote canyon in New Mexico, the Pacific Northwest, New York City, the virtual world, the past, and the unstable future, the author asks, “Whose afterimage am I?”
The sprawling, celebratory, mourning chorus of this book is the sum of many voices; the words of other writers, poets, and artists are interwoven with the author’s words. This is a celebration of language’s capacity to supersede bodily limits, mortality, and existential loneliness. Daniela Naomi Molnar’s chorus encompasses violence, love, empathy, fear, a burning planet, a pandemic, heartbreak, desire, joy, and grief. Rather than seeking resolution, these poems look through the lens of a fragmented self, dwelling in plurality, discord, and harmony.
CHORUS is the winner of Omnidawn’s 1st /2nd Book Prize, judged by Kazim Ali.
- GenresPoetry
135 pages, Paperback
Published January 20, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 15, 2023
On one hand, Molnar thinks about the self as a chorus. The single voice aware of other voices, their concerns, which are her concerns, though they feel outside her, and they may be, but she’s brought them in, and it’s unclear whether her subjective self sees harmony among all those concerns or some other interrelation. It’s the familiar “containing multitudes” idea from often attributed to Walt Whitman, but I think we can all relate to the idea in some way. More, meet the even more inside our heads.
And however all these voices exist for Molnar, her book accounts for them in that long armed sinewy lyric style, like what Jorie Graham uses. Or James McCorkle. The poetry feels unstoppable, entirely engaged with how and what the subjective recognizes. I am so easily drawn into this kind of poetry. Because it feels to me like the summer, when you’re holding a water hose to your mouth, and you find a rhythm for drinking all that water. There is so much for Molnar to tell me, so many ways to situate the facts, so many facts. Her poems are entirely symbiotic with my eagerness to learn more about her world.
And what sets this book apart, for me, is how the “chorus” Molnar accounts for is not only related to the subjective, it’s the chorus of what she can sense exists just outside her range of sight. That way when you can focus entirely on a specific moment or a specific object, so you are entirely with it. But then you catch something in your peripheral vision, and you realize how much there is to sensation. Your body has edited so many other sensations out, so you occupy this single one. And many of the poems (especially the ones opening the book) are about that moment when you sense how much more exists just outside your concentrated field of vision. You sense intensely. And then you realize the implications of this intensity, because what if you were to sense those parts in your peripheral vision with that same intensity. Maybe it’s not possible! And it’s Molnar’s balance between the heavy lyric focus and the dilemma of whether it’s possible to sense these peripheral elements with that same focus that forms the ongonig tension for my reading.
And however all these voices exist for Molnar, her book accounts for them in that long armed sinewy lyric style, like what Jorie Graham uses. Or James McCorkle. The poetry feels unstoppable, entirely engaged with how and what the subjective recognizes. I am so easily drawn into this kind of poetry. Because it feels to me like the summer, when you’re holding a water hose to your mouth, and you find a rhythm for drinking all that water. There is so much for Molnar to tell me, so many ways to situate the facts, so many facts. Her poems are entirely symbiotic with my eagerness to learn more about her world.
And what sets this book apart, for me, is how the “chorus” Molnar accounts for is not only related to the subjective, it’s the chorus of what she can sense exists just outside her range of sight. That way when you can focus entirely on a specific moment or a specific object, so you are entirely with it. But then you catch something in your peripheral vision, and you realize how much there is to sensation. Your body has edited so many other sensations out, so you occupy this single one. And many of the poems (especially the ones opening the book) are about that moment when you sense how much more exists just outside your concentrated field of vision. You sense intensely. And then you realize the implications of this intensity, because what if you were to sense those parts in your peripheral vision with that same intensity. Maybe it’s not possible! And it’s Molnar’s balance between the heavy lyric focus and the dilemma of whether it’s possible to sense these peripheral elements with that same focus that forms the ongonig tension for my reading.
August 29, 2025
Dense but surgically precise, filled with so much wisdom and such beautiful lines. Took me a while to read. Leaves, despite the density, a feeling of lightness.
December 15, 2025
Easily my top poetry collection of the year. A thousand times yes.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews