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WINNER OF THE 2013 JAMES LAUGHLIN AWARD
Winner of the 2013 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award
A Publishers Weekly "Best Book of 2013"
A NPR "Best Book of 2013"
A Coldfront Magazine "Top 40 Poetry Book" for 2013
“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.” —Publishers Weekly
Weise’s collection “examines the daily life and consciousness of a speaker with a disability willing to confront all taboos associated with sex, intimacy, identity, gender, and love.” - Coldfront Magazine
The Los Angeles Times described Jillian Weise's debut poetry collection as "a fearless dissection of the taboo and the hidden." In this second collection she forwards her bold, sexy poetics by chronicling an affair with a man she names "Big Logos." These poems throw into question sex, the law, identity, sentiment, and power, shifting between lyric and narrative, hyper-realism and magical realism, fact and fiction.
I've Been Waiting All Night
I reckon you were asleep with your girl
before the phone rang. Make something up.
I've been waiting all night to tell you
about the couple in post-War France,
the woman fresh in her grave
and the man who didn't like his mistress dead,
no sir, and so exhumed her, to the dismay
of his wife, who had him arrested
for the stink he made.
She was reburied, returned to the dead.
After jail, he dug her up to fuck again.
Attached suction cups and crafted
a wig from a broom. You can go now.
I'm more in the mood than you're used to.
Jillian Weise—an above-the-knee amputee with a computerized prosthetic—identifies as a cyborg and has discussed the identity in essays for the New York Times and Drunken Boat. Her books include The Amputee's Guide to Sex (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and The Colony (Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press, 2010). She is an assistant professor at Clemson University, a contributing editor at the South Carolina Review, and co-director of the Annual Clemson Literary Festival.
"[The Book of Goodbyes]...is punctuated with an intriguing dip into magic realism." —Charleston City Paper
"…a smart and savvy ode to absences—of a lover, of a self, and of a part of the self, literal and figurative ... This is a brilliant book ultimately about connection.” —Publishers Weekly *Starred* Review
"This book reminds us that the pain of love and loss, in the hands of a powerful wordsmith such as Weise, might just morph into passion, thrill, strength. And that love-suffering can bring us ever closer to lovability because through it we learn to connect, renew, transform.” -Brenda Shaughnessy, The Academy of American Poets
“...unflinching and profoundly relevant poetry … a take on alienation that implicitly indicts all of us.” -Huffington Post
“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.” -Publishers Weekly
“Book of Goodbyes is edgy” and “in-your face.” -Library Journal
“Jillian Weise … is a force of nature. This collection follows up her debut, The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, with what happens when sex becomes love that just won’t go away — no matter how unsuitable the beloved seems to be. This is love poetry for the 21st century: hot, hip and heart-rending.” -Craig Morgan Teicher
Acknowledgments 4
One 5
Up Late and Likewise 6
The Ugly Law 7
Decent Recipe for Tilapia 11
I’ve Been Waiting All Night 12
Café Loop 13
How to Treat Flowers 16
Affairs 19
His Girlfriend Stops By 20
Intermission 21
Tiny and Courageous Finches 22
Go On High Ship 31
Marcel Addresses Kate 36
Two 39
Why I No Longer Skype 40
Portrait of Big Logos 42
Once I thought I was going to die . . . 43
All the Littles in Exodus 47
Semi Semi Dash 48
Poem for His Ex-Girlfriend 49
Goodbyes 52
For Big Logos, In Hopes He Will Write Poems Again 54
Be Not Far From Me 57
Curtain Call 61
Elegy for Zahra Baker 62
Notes 68