
The Clearing
Poems
Allison Adair(Author)
Milkweed Editions (Publisher)
Will be published approx. on 23. July 2020
Book
Hardback
96 pages
978-1-57131-514-4 (ISBN)
Description
Finalist for the 2021 Housatonic Book Award in Poetry
Winner of the 2019 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, The Clearing is "a lush, lyrical book about a world where women are meant to carry things to safety and men leave decisively" (Henri Cole).
Luminous and electric from the first line to the last, Allison Adair's debut collection navigates the ever-shifting poles of violence and vulnerability with a singular incisiveness and a rich imagination. The women in these poems live in places that have been excavated for gold and precious ores, and they understand the nature of being hollowed out. From the midst of the Civil War to our current era, Adair charts fairy tales that are painfully familiar, never forgetting that violence is often accompanied by tenderness. Here we wonder, "What if this time instead of crumbs the girl drops / teeth, her own, what else does she have"?
The Clearing knows the dirt beneath our nails, both alone and as a country, and pries it gently loose until we remember something of who we are, "from before...from a similar injury or kiss."
There is a dark beauty in this work, and Adair is a skilled stenographer of the silences around which we orbit. Described by Henri Cole as "haunting and dirt caked," her unromantic poems of girlhood, nature, and family linger with an uncommon, unsettling resonance.
Winner of the 2019 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, The Clearing is "a lush, lyrical book about a world where women are meant to carry things to safety and men leave decisively" (Henri Cole).
Luminous and electric from the first line to the last, Allison Adair's debut collection navigates the ever-shifting poles of violence and vulnerability with a singular incisiveness and a rich imagination. The women in these poems live in places that have been excavated for gold and precious ores, and they understand the nature of being hollowed out. From the midst of the Civil War to our current era, Adair charts fairy tales that are painfully familiar, never forgetting that violence is often accompanied by tenderness. Here we wonder, "What if this time instead of crumbs the girl drops / teeth, her own, what else does she have"?
The Clearing knows the dirt beneath our nails, both alone and as a country, and pries it gently loose until we remember something of who we are, "from before...from a similar injury or kiss."
There is a dark beauty in this work, and Adair is a skilled stenographer of the silences around which we orbit. Described by Henri Cole as "haunting and dirt caked," her unromantic poems of girlhood, nature, and family linger with an uncommon, unsettling resonance.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Minneapolis
United States
Product notice
Paper over boards
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 213 mm
Width: 170 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
295 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-57131-514-4 (9781571315144)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Person
Originally from central Pennsylvania, Allison Adair is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, Kenyon Review Online, North American Review, and ZYZZYVA, among other journals. Recipient of a Pushcart Prize, the Florida Review Editors' Award, the Orlando Prize, and first place in Mid-American Review's Fineline Competition, Adair lives in Boston, where she teaches at Boston College and GrubStreet.
Content
The Clearing
I
After the Police Have Been Called
Letter to My Niece, in Silverton, Colorado
As for the Glossy Green Tractor You Were
Miscarriage
Week Six of the Fire
Self-Portrait as Cenotaph
Hitching
Debt
First Plow at Red Mountain Pass
Herr's Ridge, 1983: A Reenactment
Fine Arts
Angelus
Silverton
What We Should Really Be Afraid Of
II
Fable
Ways to Describe a Death Inside Your Own Living Body
Mother of 2 Stabbed to Death in Silverton
Local Music
Gettysburg
Advice for the New Mother
Crown Cinquain for the Tattooed Man I Refused
He Waited for Days
As I Near Forty I Think of You Then
When Horses Turn Down the Road
Letter to My Foundling: #235, Boy
Memento Mori: Bell Jar with Suspended Child
III
Western Slope
Whale Fall
If Imagination and Memory Met Unexpectedly, One Last Time
Morning Tea
Mine Fire at Centralia
Stopping Over the Arno
City Life
Flight Theory
What Falls Behind
No Response
Recurring Dream
Crown Cinquain for a Lost Child, Eight Years Later
At the Park One Day, My Six-Year-Old Asks If Mermaids Are Real
The Age We Were
Local History
River Bone
Honey
Disaster at Gold King Mine
The Big Thinkers
RD 8 Box 16A (Rural Route)
Bear Fight in Rockaway
I
After the Police Have Been Called
Letter to My Niece, in Silverton, Colorado
As for the Glossy Green Tractor You Were
Miscarriage
Week Six of the Fire
Self-Portrait as Cenotaph
Hitching
Debt
First Plow at Red Mountain Pass
Herr's Ridge, 1983: A Reenactment
Fine Arts
Angelus
Silverton
What We Should Really Be Afraid Of
II
Fable
Ways to Describe a Death Inside Your Own Living Body
Mother of 2 Stabbed to Death in Silverton
Local Music
Gettysburg
Advice for the New Mother
Crown Cinquain for the Tattooed Man I Refused
He Waited for Days
As I Near Forty I Think of You Then
When Horses Turn Down the Road
Letter to My Foundling: #235, Boy
Memento Mori: Bell Jar with Suspended Child
III
Western Slope
Whale Fall
If Imagination and Memory Met Unexpectedly, One Last Time
Morning Tea
Mine Fire at Centralia
Stopping Over the Arno
City Life
Flight Theory
What Falls Behind
No Response
Recurring Dream
Crown Cinquain for a Lost Child, Eight Years Later
At the Park One Day, My Six-Year-Old Asks If Mermaids Are Real
The Age We Were
Local History
River Bone
Honey
Disaster at Gold King Mine
The Big Thinkers
RD 8 Box 16A (Rural Route)
Bear Fight in Rockaway