The Difficult Farm

by Heather Christle

The Difficult Farm is where you’ll find surprising jolts of the sweetest kindness delivered via poetry that’s new, urgent, blessed, beautiful, careful, tenacious, a little scary, very scary, and awfully generous to us all. When I read a poem by Heather Christle I’m awed. – Dara Wier

This is serious. Heather Christle’s poems in The Difficult Farm are dancing with the mysteries surrounding our condition and enlivening our language in the process. Christle’s poems are magical but they’re too busy to tell you that. These poems run and jump and float over an ever-evolving landscape where what’s at work is the serious business of discovery. In this book you will make discoveries of all kinds. These poems will shoot you to the moon, but which moon? – James Tate

Genres: Poetry

77 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Heather Christle is the author of The Crying Book (Catapult), a NYT Editor’s Choice, Indie Next Selection, and national bestseller that was translated into eight languages, awarded the Georgia Book Award for memoir, and adapted for radio by the BBC. An Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University in Atlanta, Christle is also the author of four poetry collections including The Trees The Trees (Octopus Books), which won the Believer Book Award and was adapted into a ballet by the Pacific Northwest Ballet. In 2021 she was the recipient of a George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship in nonfiction. Born in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire to a Merchant Mariner from North Dakota and an artist from London, Christle spent her teen years and early twenties immersed in the Boston punk scene. She attended Tufts University, graduating in 2004. After receiving her MFA from UMass Amherst in 2009, she was a Creative Writing Fellow at Emory University from 2009-11, and has also taught at UT Austin and Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in Decatur, Georgia, with her partner (poet and writer Christopher DeWeese), their child, and two cats.

Reviews

[Zoe Tuck · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book in the laundromat by Broadway and 41st in Oakland with my sister. Katy was reading The Man Without Qualities Vol. 1: A Sort of Introduction and Pseudo Reality Prevails because she asked for a book to read before we left the apartment. I think she won. The radio at the laundromat was tuned to a soul/r&b station and they weren't messing around. I remember the poems giving off a whiff of the surreal. I remember the characters hanging around the laundromat and the 7/11. I remember my coworker telling me that it was James Tateesque. The poems themselves though have passed through me leaving only this trace.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are sometimes funny and sometimes clever and pretty consistently interesting to read.

I want to read more great poetry like this. Recommend me more great poetry like this.

[Emmanuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

"any time you buy anything, you should buy an extra, in case you really like it"

so i guess i should buy a second copy then

[André Habet · Rating 5 out of 5]

My bro-in-law and I rapped a few of these poems on our way back on the zoo on my birthday, which was not nearly as terrible as I thought it'd be. I then read the book aloud to my nephew in one setting as he verrryyy slowly went to sleep. This book is wonderful to read aloud. I felt clever, sweet, and kindly profane as I spoke Christle's words.

1st of the several books I'm reading to see if Kaveh Akbar and I are poetry soulmates. 1/1: on our way

[Betsy Wheeler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This beautiful and casually sexy book answers the very question that it asks "How can I help/but love the whole stupid planet?/In which I make mistakes." It will give you, as it's given me "a way of reaching up to touch again/the harmless, feral sky." For that I am very grateful...

[Martyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this collection, it's so playful with language and is just downright funny. It made me laugh in many places but I also found myself smiling at the inventiveness of the metaphors and phrasing - this is a very talented poet at work.

One of my favorite lines was "...let's say that reading is like grave-rubbing and the charcoal is your eyes" - yes, lets say that, both because it's just fabulous imagery but also because the more I think about that line the deeper it gets. Ditto for the rest of the words, lines and poems in this book.

[Meg Ready · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the poems veer too far in the realm of nonsensical while others derive a lot of their complexity from Cristle's unique style. It's not a perfect collection but it's interesting in the layering of themes throughout.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unfortunately, The Difficult Farm was too difficult! I so very much wanted to love this book, but I had too much trouble focusing on it. Hearing it read aloud helped but I could only pester my husband to read to me so many times. I will try reading this again after a bit.

[David Clark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Piecemeal isn’t the right word and neither is slapdash or erratic though they all come to mind when thinking of this collection. Some pieces hang with an odd and luminous light while most others feel like ideas pouring out of a bucket of words.

[Sean Dunnsue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exhilarating and hilarious. Christle’s writing can be disarming at times but it far from lacks punch. In inventing the absurd she manages to capture so many genuine and raw feelings. After reading this I feel refreshed and inspired by the creative potential of language.

[H · Rating 4 out of 5]

“After I was born/ I began to understand precisely the devastation/ a small event can cause” (Big Spender, pp 23)

“I sat on the sidewalk to wait for them./They would drive up in golden vans.” (The Long Divider, 77)

[Coby English · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of poetry, so moved by it

[Annabel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked some of the poems but as the book went on the absurdity started to feel meaningless and random so I lost a lot of emotional investment

[Kelsey]

These narrative poems operate in dream-logic; they are surreal and irreverent and sometimes funny, but that wasn't always enough for me.

[Spencer Mancuso · Rating 5 out of 5]

Luv. Received this book as a gift from poetry teacher. NH poet

[Dana]

recommended by kaveh akbar

[Kate DeLay · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5! I like her later work a lot, and I can see the tendril beginnings in these poems. Fun and surprising.

[Allison Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was entertaining? Yet confusing. I really liked parts of it and really didn’t like others

[giuseppe manley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dara Wier describes the work as "urgent" and James Tate as "magical but...too busy to tell you that"; I'd lean toward busy, and maybe throw in the word "whimsical." Overall, not my type of poetry, but there were a number of great moments. I couldn't find a lot to orient myself by, but did find it refreshing when themes or ideas reappeared, like wounded soldiers, nursing, the farm, etc. It seemed to end suddenly, and a lot of the poems blended together, possibly because the speaker never congealed into a distinct identity beyond assuming a particular voice. This gem from the end of "It Is Raining in Here" would probably be my highlight: "...I read once / of a man who suffered from what / they dubbed 'phantom antlers' -- he'd go / to groom them and instead he'd groom the air" (37). Would add half a star if they'd let me.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some poets attempt to disassemble the hulking metaphysical machinery of the universe. And that sort of poetry has its place, I suppose. But I usually find grandiose poets exhausting. I'm not huge on poetry, but when I'm in the mood I usually prefer the type that Heather Christle writes. It is simple, funny and pretty.

Good job, Heather. A solid three and a half.

Also: have you seen my shelf of books I've read in 2011? Apparently I'm a sucker for a book cover with an animal on it.

[Shappi]

I've decided not to rate books by people I either know or who are friends of friends. (hence no more stars on many poetry books, doesn't mean I didn't like it.) I appreciated the energy and strength of conviction of these poems very much. I think ultimately I would have liked more gut feeling in there.

[Joseph Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetry that keeps waking up.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

actually just finished a second read, which was highly rewarding. looking forward to The Trees, The Trees

[Luis Correa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of surprising, funny turns and images. A little too close to James Tate's style. Could tell that Christle would follow the book up with something great like The Trees The Trees.

[Rachel burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

Power house of words, imagery & depth. The build drives ones crazy, then it slows, builds, slows & leaves you thirsty for more.

[david · Rating 4 out of 5]

probably a 5 once i actually get to read it instead of having it read to me. lovely, though.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heather Christle is wonderfully whimsical and weird. The Difficult Farm was everything all at once and jumping at you from fifteen different places--playful yet wistful, and unabashedly sincere.

[Jendi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was consistently charmed and intrigued by these poems' tone of voice. The non sequiturs worked better in some poems than others. Many memorable and peculiar moments.

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in one sitting on my friend Megan's couch during a particularly tough summer. It's really, really good.