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I must admit that when I encountered this text for the first time, I was flung far out of my realm. House of Jars is brilliant in so many ways, and though I have long been an intimate friend of poetry, I was at first daunted by the intellectual challenges that this work presented. The opportunity to explore this work served doubly as another step forward along my academic journey, and once I learned to speak its language, I found House of Jars to be a delightfully rewarding challenge, to which I hope I rose valiantly.
Because I also enjoy listening to audio, a medium that is able to fit in spaces where books might not, for example, while driving, I was delighted to hear that More Lies has just been released in an audio version. The audiobook, narrated by Allen himself, utilises his terrific acting ability in order to really draw out some of those themes. The narration is by turns wry, ironic, even slapstick at times, but always engaging.
The connection between poetry and Jungian analysis is clearly presented; however, a reader would be justified in coming away from this book with two ideas: that the book is aimed more at psychoanalysts, not poets, despite the extensive references to poets’ thoughts and citations from their work, and that the link between poetry and Jungian analysis is less a link and more a continuous flow, as they infuse each other.
Bob Rich is an expert on the subject. He has been a psychotherapist for over 30 years, both in a clinical practice and through extensive volunteering of his services in multiple forums. He also has firsthand experience of the most intense kind of grief, having recenly experienced the loss of his own daughter Natalie to liver cancer in December 2024. The Hole in Your Life, Rich’s 20th book, is dedicated to Natalie and draws heavily on both personal experience and Rich’s extensive clinical understanding of the many pathways grief can take.
Coburn’s language moves fluidly between straightforward prose to soaring poetic imagery, particularly around the central character, the foal. Sam learns to make new meaning in a harsh environment, which is beyond alcohol, blame, and violence; finding communication and care is a purer way to relate to the world. Coburn’s verse novel is a beautifully written and visceral bildungsroman, which speaks like a scared whisper from broken men in rural settings; about men trying to learn how to nurture others, and in turn nurture themselves.
At forty-five pages, 18 Shticks isn’t a long collection, but it covers a lot of ground. Individually these are stories of ordinary lives made surreal through life’s twists, through close examination, and through a sense that just beneath the surface of any situation, there is another reality simmering.
There’s something special about finding within a book ourselves, to see pieces of us reflected back to us on a page; there’s something special, too, about getting a peek into a world that feels far removed from our every day, about an escape that teaches us something about someone fully unlike ourselves. For me, Impossible bridged this line between selfishness and empathy, between the joy at shared experience and the curiosity at learning about someone who’s nothing like I am.
The collection may end with the word “home” but that word is followed by an ellipsis, that punctuation mark which means that something has been left out. Here at the end, it alludes not only to the contents being fragmentary but to the whole collection itself being a fragment. The book itself is a border, a liminal space inviting everything unsaid to gather around it.
This collection is wonderfully vast with its symbolism and imagery that will surely challenge readers to think about infertility differently. Kedney’s intention of her work being a vessel for other woman to understand infertility’s emotional and psychological impact is enlightening, especially as I am a young woman in her twenties—infertility hasn’t crossed my mind yet
Moving from present to past with slim reflective passages, the novel examines more than individual responses to violence; it investigates cultural dissonance and our innate need to place blame on ourselves or the other, whoever that may be, and sometimes it’s us in an earlier life. A powerful examination of memory, resilience, reckoning, and acceptance, Di Pietrantonio’s novel marries fact with fiction to create a novel driven by secrets that must be relinquished and failings that must be acknowledged. It’s about honesty and truth.