The Trees The Trees
(Octopus Books, 2011)
Winner of the 2012 Believer Poetry Award
Heather’s Christle’s second collection, The Trees The Trees, is ecstatic, breathless, full of incandescent humor and wonder, full of miniature moment’s hums, pocked with graceful elisions and gasps; there is spellbound play and intense intimacy in each gap-toothed, center-justified prose poem. Read and love her seemingly spontaneous utterances spun from her rapt attention to daily life, nature, solitude, romance, to her own reeling and enchanting imagination.
– Cathy Park Hong, author of Dance Dance Revolution
If you’re thinking about a new tattoo, may I recommend dropping your finger onto any random phrase in Heather Christle’s new book? That’s how keen her ear for the off-the-cuff aphorism is, how neatly her lines break into glistening parts. You get the impression of the oracle at Delphi trying her hand at stand-up or jamming the broadcast of the nightly news: Christle’s gift for welding surreal visions to living speech rhythms keeps unlocking new surprises, page after page. At least once per poem, you feel like the triple-bars just lined up in the slot-machine window, and you laugh or cry out.
– John Darnielle, of The Mountain Goats
For two weeks after The Trees The Trees came out, people could call to have a poem from the book read to them, live. Read more about the project here.
Reviews:
Molly Brodak for The Faster Times
Elizabeth Taddonio for The Lit Pub
Kim Gek Lin Short for Bookslut
