In the House In the Woods

IN THE HOUSE IN THE WOODS chronicles grief through forests, down highways, and across state lines, as the speaker remembers and re-constructs their own origin. Core to the poems is a longing for closeness: to the sister who died, and to the siblings who remain. "I will beat the dark this time," claims the poet, "but still watch for deer / along the side of the road." Even in hope there is a certain wariness, something lurking among the trees. IN THE HOUSE IN THE WOODS leads the way back up the horse path toward home, following the last bit of sun.

The dreamlike world of these poems is arid and ethereal as the Oklahoma landscape, with language lush as skin and visceral as teeth. The speaker claims: "I have never written an origin story before / That's not true" and goes on to construct a mythology of sisterhood, daughterhood, grief, and patriarchy, where women are reduced and exalted in their bodies, where the bonds between the living and the dead are as delicate and unshakeable as dandelion chains. In the House In the Woods is an electric new collection by a powerful voice in contemporary poetry.

-Erin Slaughter, author of A Manual for How to Love Us & The Sorrow Festival

Reading Roseanna Alice Boswell's In the House In the Woods is like finding a "clear connection" on the radio after hours of white noise. If you are searching for a house of memory and metamorphosis; if you are trying to locate a woodland of imagery and insight; or if you aim to "find out where we've been hiding our throats," look no further. Deftly, gently, Boswell's tremendous poems offer all this and more. Here is a poet of the body who sings of blood, mortality, and futurity. Here is the poet we've been waiting to encounter.

-Ama Codjoe, author of Bluest Nude