In her accomplished second collection of poems, Katrina Vandenberg writes from the intersection of power and forgiveness. With poems named for letters of the Phoenician alphabet, and employing such innovative forms as the ancient ghazal, Vandenberg deciphers the seemingly indecipherable in this extraordinary becoming of self through language. Moving between the physical and the abstract, the individual and the collective, "Alphabet Not Unlike the World" unearths meaning--with astonishing beauty--from the pain of loss and separation.
The Alphabet Not Unlike the World: Poems
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Review
Three poems from the collection read on NPR on Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac"
"Kenyon Review" Holiday Reading Recommendation Pick
"Vanderberg [shows] remarkable restraint when telling stories. She trusts her reader enough to leave these spare images uncluttered with explanation. More important, her reader can trust that fine writing and poetic logic will carry these poems as they travel across the wide spaces between what we understand."
-- Elizabeth Hoover, "Minneapolis Star Tribune"
"It's not an arrangement of poems that serve as settings for a few gems: every poem, it seems, is a standout."
-- Jake Adam York, "Kenyon Review"
"Vandenberg's second collection takes the alphabet and its evolution as form and reservoir of associations as its subject...This is a rich subject...The flashes of inspiration--"if antlers / are trees in silhouette"--are genuine.
-- Michael Autrey, "Booklist"
"Thanks to Katrina's clear crystalline poems, all women will remember adolescence as it moves through family, and all men will have something new to understand. Vandenberg's calm observations create a harmony of thought in this lyrical and resonant collection. Each poem is a story with a stunning purpose."
--"Washington Independent Review of Books"
Praise for Katrina Vandenberg
"Katrina Vandenberg uses playfully intoxicating metaphors to launder the simplicities and eccentricities of life."
--"Flaunt"
"Kenyon Review" Holiday Reading Recommendation Pick
"Vanderberg [shows] remarkable restraint when telling stories. She trusts her reader enough to leave these spare images uncluttered with explanation. More important, her reader can trust that fine writing and poetic logic will carry these poems as they travel across the wide spaces between what we understand."
-- Elizabeth Hoover, "Minneapolis Star Tribune"
"It's not an arrangement of poems that serve as settings for a few gems: every poem, it seems, is a standout."
-- Jake Adam York, "Kenyon Review"
"Vandenberg's second collection takes the alphabet and its evolution as form and reservoir of associations as its subject...This is a rich subject...The flashes of inspiration--"if antlers / are trees in silhouette"--are genuine.
-- Michael Autrey, "Booklist"
"Thanks to Katrina's clear crystalline poems, all women will remember adolescence as it moves through family, and all men will have something new to understand. Vandenberg's calm observations create a harmony of thought in this lyrical and resonant collection. Each poem is a story with a stunning purpose."
--"Washington Independent Review of Books"
Praise for Katrina Vandenberg
"Katrina Vandenberg uses playfully intoxicating metaphors to launder the simplicities and eccentricities of life."
--"Flaunt"
Praise for "Atlas"
"Katrina has always traced the patterns and rhythms she discovers so readily in life. In "Atlas," she translates those patterns and rhythms into poetry."
--Paula Evans Neuman, The "News-Herald"
"The debut poetry collection of Katrina Vandenberg employs a language and flair for expression that transcends time while drawing upon personal family artifacts, memories, ideas, and friends."
--Betsy L. Hogan, "Midwest Book Review"
"What a gift to have these poems in th
About the Author
Katrina Vandenberg is the co-author, with Todd Boss, of the chapbook entitled "On Marriage" (Red Dragonfly Press, 2008), and the author of the poetry collection "Atlas" (Milkweed Editions, 2004). Her poems and essays have appeared in the "American Scholar," "Post Road Magazine," "Orion Magazine," the "Iowa Review," and other magazines. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a Bush Artist Fellowship, a Loft-McKnight Award in Poetry, and a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the Sewanee Writers' Conference. In 2008-09, she was the resident fellow at the Amy Clampitt House in Lenox, Massachusetts. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, with her husband, the novelist John Reimringer.
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Dazzling and rare
24 Sep 2012
By elizabethrosner
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
I purchased this book after reading one of the poems on The Writer's Almanac, and the collection as a whole exceeded my expectations. The organizing principle of the alphabet gave the book coherence, and yet each poem has its own character and unique power. My favorites are the ones with titles that read almost like flash fiction ("The Autumn Our Babysitter was Murdered by her Boyfriend" "My Sister Visits Her Ex in Prison Once a Year to Ask Him Whether He Did It" "The Night the Painter Unpinned Her Hair" "By Now the Warning Bell Has Rung and None of Us Can Drive"). While leading a writing workshop, I read aloud to my group the poem called "We Kept Having to Say," and everyone listening seemed pretty much ready to rush out and buy a copy of the book too. Her more experimental poems (i.e., the ones that are less narrative than those mentioned above) demonstrate that this writer has many substantial tricks up her sleeve, and I look forward to reading as well as sharing her work again and again. Katrina Vandenberg deserves all the kudos she gets (and I hope she gets even more of them).
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