Three poems from the collection read on NPR on Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac”
Kenyon Review Holiday Reading Recommendation Pick
Vanderberg [shows] remarkable restraint when telling stories. She trusts her reader enough to leave these spare images uncluttered with explanation. More important, her reader can trust that fine writing and poetic logic will carry these poems as they travel across the wide spaces between what we understand.”
Elizabeth Hoover,
Minneapolis Star Tribune
“It’s not an arrangement of poems that serve as settings for a few gems: every poem, it seems, is a standout.”
Jake Adam York,
Kenyon Review
“Vandenberg’s second collection takes the alphabet and its evolution as form and reservoir of associations as its subject…This is a rich subject…The flashes of inspirationif antlers / are trees in silhouette”are genuine.
Michael Autrey,
Booklist
“Thanks to Katrina’s clear crystalline poems, all women will remember adolescence as it moves through family, and all men will have something new to understand. Vandenberg’s calm observations create a harmony of thought in this lyrical and resonant collection. Each poem is a story with a stunning purpose.”
Washington Independent Review of Books
Praise for
Katrina Vandenberg
Katrina Vandenberg uses playfully intoxicating metaphors to launder the simplicities and eccentricities of life.”
—
Flaunt
Praise for
Atlas
Katrina has always traced the patterns and rhythms she discovers so readily in life. In
Atlas, she translates those patterns and rhythms into poetry.”
Paula Evans Neuman, The News-Herald
The debut poetry collection of Katrina Vandenberg employs a language and flair for expression that transcends time while drawing upon personal family artifacts, memories, ideas, and friends.”
Betsy L. Hogan,
Midwest Book Review
What a gift to have these poems in the world! Katrina Vandenberg is an expert witness to the verities, pathologies and moments. The stain of blood on this Atlas is exquisite. Here is the record of an honest pilgrim–a book of treasure maps and vital stats–a mighty work in words.”
–Thomas Lynch, author of
The Undertaking
Praise for The Alphabet Not Unlike the World
“Katrina Vandenberg recognizes the alphabet as a site where the global and the local join, where history becomes the present moment, where history has moment, is momentous. In these poems, ‘seeing is not the same / as seeing through, ‘ but both occur, guided by the double recognition of the alphabet as both medium and message. These poems live near enough to ‘the house of the unsaid’ that when in one of them the first person invites the second to ‘tell me if you want me to stop, ‘ a reader may say, as I did out loud, Not yet. Please, not yet.“
–H. L. Hix
“A stranger pays your bar tab out of pity; the inmate–seeking approval–changes his tune year after year; a saint stands still enough for birds to nest in his hand: these poems take us to the profane, to shed light on the tenuous sacred. Vandenberg’s prosodic gift takes us to the breezy edge of the line. In traditional forms like the ghazal, witty alphabet poems, and cyclonic, free verse, she reminds us that truth already is slant, ‘Hell is holding onto a secret, some of us already know.'” –Kristin Naca
“A deeply confident, compelling voice, with strong music, originality, and flow. I wanted to go wherever it went. Passionate with a keen sense of surprise, these poems are funny, serious, and wise all at once. Bravo.”
–Naomi Shihab Nye
“Vandenberg fills her hands with the world and offers it to us in a gleaming, dripping plenty: a love letter to letters, an omnibus inventory of signs, symbols, and gestures, a guileless gift of all the things she loves, knows, and feels.”
–Todd Boss
“I had meant to read a few poems, then return to the book another time. Two hours later I put it down, shaken and exhilarated. It careens between heartbreak and breakthrough in ways that began by amazing me and finished by moving me to the point where I had no choice but to agree when Vandenberg writes in the book’s last poem, ‘You can’t, in the end/close the book.'”
–Jim Moore
Katrina Vandenberg is the author of Atlas, and co-author of the chapbook On Marriage. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
From the Back Cover
Praise for The Alphabet Not Unlike the World
Katrina Vandenberg recognizes the alphabet as a site where the global and the local join, where history becomes the present moment, where history has moment, is momentous. In these poems, ‘
seeing is not the same / as seeing through,’ but both occur, guided by the double recognition of the alphabet as both medium and message. These poems live near enough to the house of the unsaid’ that when in one of them the first person invites the second to tell me if you want me to stop,’ a reader may say, as I did out loud, Not yet. Please, not yet.”
H. L. Hix
A stranger pays your bar tab out of pity; the inmateseeking approvalchanges his tune year after year; a saint stands still enough for birds to nest in his hand: these poems take us to the profane, to shed light on the tenuous sacred. Vandenberg’s prosodic gift takes us to the breezy edge of the line. In traditional forms like the ghazal, witty alphabet poems, and cyclonic, free verse, she reminds us that truth already is slant, Hell is holding onto a secret, some of us already know.’” Kristin Naca
A deeply confident, compelling voice, with strong music, originality, and flow. I wanted to go wherever it went. Passionate with a keen sense of surprise, these poems are funny, serious, and wise all at once. Bravo.”
Naomi Shihab Nye
Vandenberg fills her hands with the world and offers it to us in a gleaming, dripping plenty: a love letter to letters, an omnibus inventory of signs, symbols, and gestures, a guileless gift of all the things she loves, knows, and feels.”
Todd Boss
I had meant to read a few poems, then return to the book another time. Two hours later I put it down, shaken and exhilarated. It careens between heartbreak and breakthrough in ways that began by amazing me and finished by moving me to the point where I had no choice but to agree when Vandenberg writes in the book’s last poem, You can’t, in the end/close the book.’”
Jim Moore
Katrina Vandenberg is the author of
Atlas, and co-author of the chapbook On Marriage. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
About the Author
Katrina Vandenberg is the co-author, with Todd Boss, of the chapbook entitled On Marriage (Red Dragonfly Press, 2008), and the author of the poetry collection Atlas (Milkweed Editions, 2004). Her poems and essays have appeared in the American Scholar, Post Road Magazine, Orion Magazine, the Iowa Review, and other magazines. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a Bush Artist Fellowship, a Loft-McKnight Award in Poetry, and a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. In 2008–09, she was the resident fellow at the Amy Clampitt House in Lenox, Massachusetts. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, with her husband, the novelist John Reimringer.
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