Something in the Potato Room by Heather Cousins

$16.95

14 in stock

$16.95, 6 x 9" , 80 pages, perfect bound
ISBN 978-1-888553-39-0
Purchases for the trade are handled by SPD.

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In the dark alcove of the potato room, the unexpected blooms. The surrealistic imagery in this strange little book takes the reader on an otherworldly descent where pores open like baby mouths, bones flower, and even the Real is eerily surrealized when the narrator confronts death in the mundane of the supermarket.

This poet’s forceful, startling syntax lends to the kind of Japanese-horror film aesthetic where things just “are:” unexamined, unexplained and we must simply accept them in all their dreadful wonder. The random fascination in antique medical apparati, a Foucauldian rigor, the occasional Absolute, combined with an unfussy flow of bare, vertebral prose and a bizarrely twisted narrative make for an engaging read.

Praise for Something in the Potato Room

Sparse and stunning, an addictive cinema unwinds with a lyrical and dramatic certainty. I am committed to its sound, its unerring craft and, above all, a story I just can’t shake. I’d like to thank this poet for twisting my perspective and shoving me outside my comfort zone, for showing me how poems can enter the body and take root. – Patricia Smith

 

Excerpt from Something in the Potato Room

Underneath the quilt, a red vine
was growing.             Slithering.
Crawling up his arm.    Sneaky-
snake.    Leaky ache.   Should I
bring down the shears?        The
trimming blades?         Or was it
the  sort  of  weed  that  needed
to be   uprooted—dug   out,    its
white heart held in my palm?

 

Heather Cousins

Heather Cousins, Kore Press Author

Heather Cousins (she/her/hers) is the winner of the 2009 Kore Press First Book Award. She received a a BA in Anthropology from Bryn Mawr College in 2001, an MA in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University in 2002, and a PhD in Creative Writing, in Spring 2009 from the University of Georgia. She was a Finalist for The Yalobusha Review Yellowwood Poetry Prize in 2009.

 

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Additional information

Weight 0.275 lbs
Dimensions 6 × 9 in