I left nothing inside on purpose
By Stevie Howell
By Stevie Howell
By Stevie Howell
By Stevie Howell
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$16.95
Mar 27, 2018 | ISBN 9780771039034
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Mar 27, 2018 | ISBN 9780771039041
-
$16.95
Mar 27, 2018 | ISBN 9780771039034
-
Mar 27, 2018 | ISBN 9780771039041
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Praise
RAYMOND SOUSTER AWARD WINNER
TRILLIUM BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY FINALIST
PAT LOWTHER MEMORIAL AWARD LONGLIST
âThe sense that the world ought to be comprehensible cannot be overcome or out-thought, and so at the irreducible core of everything is a shard of betrayingâthere is, after all, no ought in nature. Again and again, the poems in Stevie Howellâs I left nothing inside on purpose attempt to provide that oughtââYr mother worked for the doctor. She was also the doctorââwhich is to say, I left nothing inside on purpose is a book of bewildered lament, as only the truest and smartest books are.â âShane McCrae, author of In the Language of My Captor
âIf you mend a broken bowl with a seam of gold then the fracture becomes more precious than the bowl itself. Stevie Howellâs poems are that sort of precious. Stevieâs voice is funny, in a dark, tragic, self-conscious sort of way. Restless, in a wise, far-reaching sort of way. Beautiful, in a broken sort of way. I return to them again and again.â âNick Flynn, author of My Feelings
âStevie Howellâs poems create a dazzling sense of contemporary experience, with all its wounds, as well as the bruising quality of the past: an AI bot named Tay learns to be racist and sexist from âTalking w/ humans;â Kintsugi pottery and fragments from Kierkegaard, D.H. Lawrence, and the vocabulary of self-help rattle through the deceptive transparency of Howellâs lines. The voice here insists on ironic distance and uncomfortable intimacy, poetic history and the banality of the present, âcrowdfunded innocenceâ and âhow pain never knows when to stop.â This collection is sophisticated, funny, and sad, often within the same line.â âJury Citation, Raymond Souster Award
âStevie Howellâs I left nothing inside on purpose is a tour-de-force with its own short-hand, its own formal ingenuity and its own off-kilter insights. The poems explore a range of topics, from a concussion-induced trip to a Hawaiian hospital, to the unlikely geological accident that results in the formation of malachite; from romantic strife to struggles with infertility and alcoholism, to the absurd phenomenon of being a human self in this strange multifarious world. Throughout, the poems are vulnerable, innovative, funny, and piercingly smart.â âJury Citation, Trillium Book Award for Poetry