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Boat
From the author of The Baudelaire Fractal, a poetry classic, with new work
In 2004, boldly original poet Lisa Robertson published a chapbook, Rousseau’s Boat, poems culled from years of notebooks that are, nevertheless, by no means autobiographical. In 2010, she expanded the work into a full-length book, R’s Boat. During the pandemic, she was drawn back into decades of journals to shape Boat. These poems bring fresh vehemence to Robertson’s ongoing examination of the changing shape of feminism, the male-dominated philosophical tradition, the daily forms of discourse, and the possibilities of language itself.
“Robertson has quietly but surely emerged as one of our most exciting and prolific philosophers—I mean poets. Interested in architecture, weather systems, fashion, autobiography, gender, the classics, and just about everything else, she manages to irradiate her subjects with calm, wit, and astonishing beauty. Robertson’s style is both on splendid display and under fierce interrogation in her latest book, R’s Boat. ” —Kenyon Review
“In R’s Boat, Robertson has penned a post-conceptual, post-lyric, relentlessly self-examining performance of memory and sincerity that manages, remarkably, to be both theoretically concerned and deeply emotive. ” —Harvard Review
“R's Boat grapples with form, the constraint of language and tradition, and the challenge to avoid anything that might exist as template. The poems examine feminism, discourse, the body, and poetry itself through sumptuous, seductive language. ” —American Poets
Reviews
“R's Boat grapples with form, the constraint of language and tradition, and the challenge to avoid anything that might exist as template. The poems examine feminism, discourse, the body, and poetry itself through sumptuous, seductive language. ” —American Poets
"A difficult work of ideas, by turns enlightening and arcane, part autobiographical narrative, part literary theory, Robertson’s debut novel, for those interested in possibilities of fiction, is not to be missed. " —Publishers Weekly on The Baudelaire Fractal
“Robertson has quietly but surely emerged as one of our most exciting and prolific philosophers—I mean poets. Interested in architecture, weather systems, fashion, autobiography, gender, the classics, and just about everything else, she manages to irradiate her subjects with calm, wit, and astonishing beauty. Robertson’s style is both on splendid display and under fierce interrogation in her latest book, R’s Boat. ” —Kenyon Review
"Robertson, with feminist wit, a dash of kink, and a generous brain, has written an urtext that tenders there can be, in fact, or in fiction, no such thing. Hers is a boon for readers and writers, now and in the future. " —Bookforum on The Baudelaire Fractal
“In R’s Boat, Robertson has penned a post-conceptual, post-lyric, relentlessly self-examining performance of memory and sincerity that manages, remarkably, to be both theoretically concerned and deeply emotive. ” —Harvard Review
'This is the third installment in an expanding project, begun in 2004, based on what the experimental poet calls “indexical readings” of her daily notebooks. Drawn from a combination of old and new sample of the latter, two new sections, “The Hut” and “The Tiny Notebooks of Night,” showcase the Baudelaire Fractal author’s trademark lyric inscrutability.' - Emily Donaldson, The Globe & Mail
In 2004, boldly original poet Lisa Robertson published a chapbook, Rousseau’s Boat, poems culled from years of notebooks that are, nevertheless, by no means autobiographical. In 2010, she expanded the work into a full-length book, R’s Boat. During the pandemic, she was drawn back into decades of journals to shape Boat. These poems bring fresh vehemence to Robertson’s ongoing examination of the changing shape of feminism, the male-dominated philosophical tradition, the daily forms of discourse, and the possibilities of language itself.
“Robertson has quietly but surely emerged as one of our most exciting and prolific philosophers—I mean poets. Interested in architecture, weather systems, fashion, autobiography, gender, the classics, and just about everything else, she manages to irradiate her subjects with calm, wit, and astonishing beauty. Robertson’s style is both on splendid display and under fierce interrogation in her latest book, R’s Boat. ” —Kenyon Review
“In R’s Boat, Robertson has penned a post-conceptual, post-lyric, relentlessly self-examining performance of memory and sincerity that manages, remarkably, to be both theoretically concerned and deeply emotive. ” —Harvard Review
“R's Boat grapples with form, the constraint of language and tradition, and the challenge to avoid anything that might exist as template. The poems examine feminism, discourse, the body, and poetry itself through sumptuous, seductive language. ” —American Poets
Reviews
“R's Boat grapples with form, the constraint of language and tradition, and the challenge to avoid anything that might exist as template. The poems examine feminism, discourse, the body, and poetry itself through sumptuous, seductive language. ” —American Poets
"A difficult work of ideas, by turns enlightening and arcane, part autobiographical narrative, part literary theory, Robertson’s debut novel, for those interested in possibilities of fiction, is not to be missed. " —Publishers Weekly on The Baudelaire Fractal
“Robertson has quietly but surely emerged as one of our most exciting and prolific philosophers—I mean poets. Interested in architecture, weather systems, fashion, autobiography, gender, the classics, and just about everything else, she manages to irradiate her subjects with calm, wit, and astonishing beauty. Robertson’s style is both on splendid display and under fierce interrogation in her latest book, R’s Boat. ” —Kenyon Review
"Robertson, with feminist wit, a dash of kink, and a generous brain, has written an urtext that tenders there can be, in fact, or in fiction, no such thing. Hers is a boon for readers and writers, now and in the future. " —Bookforum on The Baudelaire Fractal
“In R’s Boat, Robertson has penned a post-conceptual, post-lyric, relentlessly self-examining performance of memory and sincerity that manages, remarkably, to be both theoretically concerned and deeply emotive. ” —Harvard Review
'This is the third installment in an expanding project, begun in 2004, based on what the experimental poet calls “indexical readings” of her daily notebooks. Drawn from a combination of old and new sample of the latter, two new sections, “The Hut” and “The Tiny Notebooks of Night,” showcase the Baudelaire Fractal author’s trademark lyric inscrutability.' - Emily Donaldson, The Globe & Mail
- GenresPoetry
176 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2022
12 people are currently reading
150 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 8, 2022
a masterpiece. I have a feeing I will be reading this book over and over again for the rest of my life.
July 16, 2022
I think that perhaps my great love
will be that shitty field
sprayed over with fungicide at night
will be that shitty field
sprayed over with fungicide at night
November 27, 2022
"in the greedy mor nings of study
as five bright planets lign
there is imperm anent happiness
a fire is burning
I have lost all my questions."
as five bright planets lign
there is imperm anent happiness
a fire is burning
I have lost all my questions."
October 17, 2022
Incredibly dense yet light simultaneously. I love the line breaks, the many different structures—which helps keep a pretty long book of poetry full of excitement—the questions and proclamations. I found it playful, dead serious, faintly spiritual. I read it twice and could read it a third time, easy. It's filled with guesswork and ambiguity so it could really never get old. I also love the tactile feel of this paperback—it's lovingly crafted.
November 22, 2024
this book opened up New Space
May 27, 2025
What is the nature of subjectivity. Fashioned as statement, but grammared as question. Does it make the sentence an active verb in the present moment. What is intimate space compared to subjective thinking. What is the subjective position of a notebook. To read Robertson's book is to participate in the present tense, and at the margins of inquiry, and to actively fray statements that might sound like questions. She is accounting for one person’s personal alignment of consciousness over time, the seeming continuity to experience, and the resulting thinking. Is that nature. At least this is what I hear in the book’s main poem, “The Hut.” Where a thread of nature intertwining consciousness, thinking, and scenery is experienced continuously. Is this the closest a person gets to nature. Is nature still outside this being natural while the mind churns through a chandelier of reflections on itself.
All of this feels very abstract. And that is the central struggle to the book. Must consciousness be abstract. And where her writing closely resembles the act of reading, like the poems feel as though they were written in the subjective space I take reading them, I wonder if it’s possible to connect my reading (an abstracted headspace) to the actual world where I’m reading. Like when the Surrealists argue dreams must be part of your reality, because even if your mind is experiencing them with no one else, it is still an experience, I wonder if when I'm reading I should be conscious not only of the text I’m absorbed in, but also the room where I’m reading, my view out the window just in front of me. This negotiation between abstraction and real world is the central dynamic of the book. Where some poems, like “The Present,” express the moment the subjective self embarks into the world. And some poems, like “Palinode,” shape a grammar that is what self-involved subjectivity feels like.
For me, “The Hut” orients me to whatever poetic strategies Robertson uses in the book’s other poems. It feels literal and introspective and interested in synthesizing abstraction or subjectivity with life experiences. Where the poet marvels at the image of the iris, because her writing it feels like the invention of the iris. It makes the image of watching a man work on a boat, what might be perceived as his very present-tense concerns, a fully bloomed recognition of a present moment. It’s a strange affect where she writes anticipating how I would read and understand what she’s writing but the writing is more concerned with how the poet will eventually return to read her older notebooks and remember what it was like to have been among these thoughts and the images they built. It’s a gesture similar to Brian Teare’s Poem Bitten By a Man. And it’s a device I enjoy because it confounds how I want to read the writing as just occurred to the poet before they wrote it. And meanwhile, the notebook frames the book with an extra layer of reflection, and removes me, as the reader, further from the poet’s thinking. Or that’s how it feels.
And what’s the irony that the poems will always be reflective of the mind, even as they reach for some account of their natural life. Because, one, there is an activity to thinking. Two, the length of a sentence involves the reader in the writer’s thinking. And three, a body’s movement is actually the root of all physical sensation, and the body that consists of mind and thinking. Robertson’s book is like an exercise in conflation. Where body and thinking are conflated. Or thinking and writing are conflated. Or writing and sensation aren’t only what you talk about in writing, but there is an ambition that the writing would be a certain kind of sensation. Like a row of mimetic gestures that are the sum of philosophizing. And I think that’s the goal for this book.
All of this feels very abstract. And that is the central struggle to the book. Must consciousness be abstract. And where her writing closely resembles the act of reading, like the poems feel as though they were written in the subjective space I take reading them, I wonder if it’s possible to connect my reading (an abstracted headspace) to the actual world where I’m reading. Like when the Surrealists argue dreams must be part of your reality, because even if your mind is experiencing them with no one else, it is still an experience, I wonder if when I'm reading I should be conscious not only of the text I’m absorbed in, but also the room where I’m reading, my view out the window just in front of me. This negotiation between abstraction and real world is the central dynamic of the book. Where some poems, like “The Present,” express the moment the subjective self embarks into the world. And some poems, like “Palinode,” shape a grammar that is what self-involved subjectivity feels like.
For me, “The Hut” orients me to whatever poetic strategies Robertson uses in the book’s other poems. It feels literal and introspective and interested in synthesizing abstraction or subjectivity with life experiences. Where the poet marvels at the image of the iris, because her writing it feels like the invention of the iris. It makes the image of watching a man work on a boat, what might be perceived as his very present-tense concerns, a fully bloomed recognition of a present moment. It’s a strange affect where she writes anticipating how I would read and understand what she’s writing but the writing is more concerned with how the poet will eventually return to read her older notebooks and remember what it was like to have been among these thoughts and the images they built. It’s a gesture similar to Brian Teare’s Poem Bitten By a Man. And it’s a device I enjoy because it confounds how I want to read the writing as just occurred to the poet before they wrote it. And meanwhile, the notebook frames the book with an extra layer of reflection, and removes me, as the reader, further from the poet’s thinking. Or that’s how it feels.
And what’s the irony that the poems will always be reflective of the mind, even as they reach for some account of their natural life. Because, one, there is an activity to thinking. Two, the length of a sentence involves the reader in the writer’s thinking. And three, a body’s movement is actually the root of all physical sensation, and the body that consists of mind and thinking. Robertson’s book is like an exercise in conflation. Where body and thinking are conflated. Or thinking and writing are conflated. Or writing and sensation aren’t only what you talk about in writing, but there is an ambition that the writing would be a certain kind of sensation. Like a row of mimetic gestures that are the sum of philosophizing. And I think that’s the goal for this book.
February 4, 2025
I have a hard time critiquing poetry books; how much of what I dislike is merely... what I don't understand?
I thought the formatting was very engulfing. The way each poem spans across several pages, and dances on each page within that is exciting. It speaks to a raw intimacy of the collage-like nature of your psyche... etc. And I like that Robertson is a scratch-notebook-keeper. Makes me think I am on the right page with my own quest as a writer.
I think I liked the book better once I watched an interview where she spoke about her processes and influences. I would recommend it, but only after you have formed your own opinions on her poetry.
And most importantly of all: the paratext of this book includes the fact the paper was made from second-growth forests, printed in vegetable ink. Even the type of printer and cutters used are mentioned. I think that's a beautiful detail to notice, because it is worth noticing. A book is a physical manifestation of an idea, and giving credit to all the moving parts that achieved that is just really thoughtful. In the interview, Robertson says Boat was a “handmade scene, but not only by me”.
Ps. the paper it's printed on is soo thick. It's beautiful!
I thought the formatting was very engulfing. The way each poem spans across several pages, and dances on each page within that is exciting. It speaks to a raw intimacy of the collage-like nature of your psyche... etc. And I like that Robertson is a scratch-notebook-keeper. Makes me think I am on the right page with my own quest as a writer.
I think I liked the book better once I watched an interview where she spoke about her processes and influences. I would recommend it, but only after you have formed your own opinions on her poetry.
And most importantly of all: the paratext of this book includes the fact the paper was made from second-growth forests, printed in vegetable ink. Even the type of printer and cutters used are mentioned. I think that's a beautiful detail to notice, because it is worth noticing. A book is a physical manifestation of an idea, and giving credit to all the moving parts that achieved that is just really thoughtful. In the interview, Robertson says Boat was a “handmade scene, but not only by me”.
Ps. the paper it's printed on is soo thick. It's beautiful!
January 29, 2026
"whatever girl dares to read just one page is a lost girl, but she can't blame it on this book — she was already ruined"
i've said often that i'm not really a poetry girlie. it's not really my niche and i tend to prefer reading full novels over reading poetry (i'm also abysmal at writing poetry but that's another problem), but there are certain poetry books that i really enjoy and this was one of them! i like the way robertson formats her poetry and how it takes up space on the page and of course, the poems themselves are beautiful as well. every word feels very intentional and i feel like i could read these poems over and over again.
my favourite was definitely the section called utopia just because i felt it personally spoke to me the most (the line i quoted is from this poem), but i think they're all super well done. idk if i would hve picked this up if it weren't for my lecture assigning it, but i'm honestly glad i got to read this because i quite liked it. i think i'll give some of robertson's other books a try as well because i really did enjoy this despite my general dislike of most poetry.
i've said often that i'm not really a poetry girlie. it's not really my niche and i tend to prefer reading full novels over reading poetry (i'm also abysmal at writing poetry but that's another problem), but there are certain poetry books that i really enjoy and this was one of them! i like the way robertson formats her poetry and how it takes up space on the page and of course, the poems themselves are beautiful as well. every word feels very intentional and i feel like i could read these poems over and over again.
my favourite was definitely the section called utopia just because i felt it personally spoke to me the most (the line i quoted is from this poem), but i think they're all super well done. idk if i would hve picked this up if it weren't for my lecture assigning it, but i'm honestly glad i got to read this because i quite liked it. i think i'll give some of robertson's other books a try as well because i really did enjoy this despite my general dislike of most poetry.
March 26, 2023
read for class. tbh did not like that much? overall not that into elevated language and breezy (poetic?) approach to leftist intellectualism, that always came back to lonely speaker/subject outside of any real context or material conditions? i did have to skim this in tiny font tho so maybe i missed smth. i loved the situationist epigraph
June 16, 2022
‘if we can’t usefully describe artifice as transcendence
we’ll die of money
and the realism of constraint.
these ideas have nothing to do with belief.’
‘The feminine again needs me
or I need her anger
so as not to again disappear.’
‘Debt has replaced Latin
As the universal language.’
we’ll die of money
and the realism of constraint.
these ideas have nothing to do with belief.’
‘The feminine again needs me
or I need her anger
so as not to again disappear.’
‘Debt has replaced Latin
As the universal language.’
June 10, 2022
not my favorite lisa robertson but that still outpaces most other things
June 14, 2022
Quite good
June 15, 2022
My introduction to this poet, and probably a new favorite. Robertson's use of refrain and her amazing skill for enjambment hook me.
"I want to return to making sentences that go nowhere."
"I want to return to making sentences that go nowhere."
February 23, 2023
Robertson does it again, her words have crept under my skin and just sits there.
October 29, 2023
REVIEW FORTHCOMING IN ARC
September 24, 2025
I’m like hey wha ssup hello
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews