Publishers Weekly has announced its "Best Books of 2013," and Jillian Weise's new release The Book of Goodbyes is on the prestigious list for poetry.
Winner of the 2013 James Laughlin Award from The Academy of American Poets, and the 2013 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, The Book of Goodbyes has had a remarkable publication year.
Publishers Weekly says of the collection, "These fierce, hip, heartbreaking love poems call out to a lover who can’t be lived with or without. They’re humorous, odd, and full of all the unreasonable truth of love. This book is the real thing."
Jillian Weise was also featured in Publishers Weekly's "Poetry Profiled 2013" earlier in the year, with exclusive behind-the-scene information on the author and new book. Check it out:
Poet: Jillian Weise
Book: In The Book of Goodbyes (BOA Editions, Sept.), Weise follows up her debut, The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, by wrestling with love that just won’t stay and just won’t go.
Representative lines:
The thing about him is
he keeps being the thing. You could never count on him. I did. It never stopped raining and I could, it was honest, tell.
Would you like to be in the same decade with me? Would you like to be caught dead with me?
Behind the book:
“Most of the poems were written in the southernmost city in the world: Ushuaia. I spent months down there, watching the ships go out to Antarctica, smoking two packs a day, and listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival at the pub. (The bartender played CCR at midnight every night.) Yet my poems kept returning to a triangular relationship back in the States. I was reading a lot of Juan Ruiz, Alejandra Pizarnik, and Antonio Porchia. The locals kept saying, ‘Why are you still here? What are you doing?’ ”
Who is your ideal reader and why?
“Anyone who has said goodbye and not meant it. Anyone who has said, ‘Don’t you ever call me again,’ and then waited for the phone to ring. Also, my tribe: anyone with a prosthetic, anyone who plugs into the wall at night.”
Click here to see Publishers Weekly's list of "Best Books of 2013".
The Book of Goodbyes is now available at the BOA Bookstore.
