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Open House |
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| C.J. Sage |
ISBN: 978-1-908836-90-8 Page Count: 64 Publication Date: Friday, May 20, 2022 Cover Artwork: Alexandra Eldridge. The Lightness of Being, 42”x36” m/m. alexandraeldridge.com |
About this Book
Open House more resembles a geological event than a housewarming party, but we’re all invited. C.J. Sage has flung open the doors and windows to time and the elements, advancing and retreating as they please. Like the undulating waves, Sage’s attention moves back and forth...between temporary concerns and permanent conditions, between two- timing neighbors and mollusks filtering the tide. These poems—precise, wise, exquisite— reside among houses overlooking the sea and the surf itself. Sage is a tough-minded poet who neither falls for the beauty of the vista nor faints from its height. Instead, she finds and considers that which is necessary and essential while calmly releasing the rest.
In Open House, C.J. Sage explores the self’s most inhabited—and perhaps least inspected—suburbs. These poems, made pliable by their precision, are spatial in scope, yet constrained in pitch. The tension of these opposites results in a lyric integrity that is increasingly rare in contemporary poetry. “You pull the strings to a mystery loft/and down drops a broken ladder./Pull again, some paper stars.” We are in the vicinity of strange neighborhoods and interiority. Everything’s adjacent. And the thinnest of wisp-thin lines separates what is house from what is home. Read this.
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Author Biography
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