Overview

An intimate and kaleidoscopic entry in the Multiverse series that excavates survival, storytelling, and coming to terms with an unrulymind. InA Window That Can Neither Open nor Close, the stakes of writing are also the stakes of living. ""Though I no longer wanted to die,"" writes Lauren Russell, ""our first years together were not easy ... because I also did not want to live."" From this enigmatic in-between, Russell dives into multitudes: cats and questions; compulsion and devotion; narrative and diagnosis; language and loneliness; scrupulosity and stasis; suicidality andlove. Resisting the neurotypical expectation to choose any one answer arising from her explorations, she invites readers to engage: a pop quiz, a twelve-sided die, an abecedarian confession, a box of mirrors, several idiosyncratic diagnostic tools, and a suite of obsidian waiting rooms. Holding binaries in suspense, Russell seamlessly unfolds and enfolds the various operations of language, moving through forms with the restless brilliance of an architect turned ethicist turned collagist turned origamist. And everything, it seems, finds some way to turn back intopoetry. From psychological evaluation to clickbait, Russell transforms the world's furious search for explanations into open inquiry. ""How flat is the silence in your pocket?"" she asks. ""Is the inside of a wish an ossuary?"" ""Do questions stick you to the wall of sociability?"" ""Did I say I am making my own bestiary?"" ""What kind of cascade is this?"" In a book dedicated to knowing, to not-knowing, and to its readers, Russell pulls back the curtain and invites usin.

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9781571315670

Table of Contents

Reviews

"Praise for A Window <That Can Neither Open nor Close A Window That Can Neither Open nor Close is a book that undoes standardization and sanitizing language through stimming’s poetic repetition, generating ‘eccentrically whorling’ difference. Not open and not closed, too large to fit the frame and too jagged around the edges, this book captures the incompatibility and queer sensibility that accompanies a diagnosis. If identity is narrative, Lauren Russell rewrites the narrative of her own identity by reconfiguring neurotypical language patterns, and offering a book I wish I had read when I was a young neurodivergent writer, finding my way past misperceptions in a world where I did not quite fit, over and over.”—Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, author of before island is volcano Praise for Descent “As a poet, Russell is a collector and a seamstress. She fashions not a quilt but a technicolor raincoat. As a sound sculptor, Russell builds in rotations of oration like church or Harryette Mullen, playful and searing in her way.”—RHINO “A triumph of art and honesty that only comes from the devotion to and exploration of one’s own wounds.”—The Rumpus “Russell raises the stakes and shows her mettle. The crafting of the tale is as much about what Lorde has given Russell as it is about what Russell does with the inherited. The result is a poetic, hybrid tour de force that delivers not only the assembled narrative, but accounts of creating the book itself.”—Yona Harvey, author of Hemming the Water “In this haunting, meticulously-crafted book of documentary poetry, Lauren Russell sifts through the tangled materials of history to make space for reimagined ancestral voices, including that of her enslaved great-great-grandmother, Peggy Hubert. Russell is a virtuoso of poetic form, and this book emerges as a radiant collage of prose poetry, lyric fragments, confessions, erasures, photographs, and images of the documents (including the diary of Robert Wallace Hubert, Peggy's enslaver and the father of her children), which form the basis of her research. Descent asks important questions about what we know and how to hold it: ""I do not know the tune, but I will hum / it for you.”—Kiki Petrosino, author of White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia “In Descent, the very talented poet Lauren Russell shows us how to write what we do not know; to give with grace and dignity, humanity to names on the family tree. Descent is a search for truths felt in one’s bones.”—Brenda Coultas, author of The Marvelous Bones of Time: Excavations and Explanations “An audacious, acid, lyrical re-membering that asks, what do we demand of the past, and what to do with its refusal? Russell’s deep archive would not answer her back. With Descent, however, she speaks to us. Sit all the way down and listen up.”—Douglas Kearney, author of Sho: Poems “Lauren Russell’s stellar new book-length poem [. . .] portrays a rich, Black American ancestral record. Sifting nimbly through all manner of documentation and employing form in revelatory ways, Russell’s poems are as much ascent into a present shaped by the past as descent from America’s true heroic figures.”—John Keene, author of Punks: New Selected Poems"

"Praise for Descent""As a poet, Russell is a collector and a seamstress. She fashions not a quilt but a technicolor raincoat. As a sound sculptor, Russell builds in rotations of oration like church or Harryette Mullen, playful and searing in her way.""--RHINO""A triumph of art and honesty that only comes from the devotion to and exploration of one's own wounds.""--The Rumpus""Russell raises the stakes and shows her mettle. The crafting of the tale is as much about what Lorde has given Russell as it is about what Russell does with the inherited. The result is a poetic, hybrid tour de force that delivers not only the assembled narrative, but accounts of creating the book itself.""--Yona Harvey, author of Hemming the Water""In this haunting, meticulously-crafted book of documentary poetry, Lauren Russell sifts through the tangled materials of history to make space for reimagined ancestral voices, including that of her enslaved great-great-grandmother, Peggy Hubert. Russell is a virtuoso of poetic form, and this book emerges as a radiant collage of prose poetry, lyric fragments, confessions, erasures, photographs, and images of the documents (including the diary of Robert Wallace Hubert, Peggy's enslaver and the father of her children), which form the basis of her research. Descent asks important questions about what we know and how to hold it: ""I do not know the tune, but I will hum / it for you.""--Kiki Petrosino, author of White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia""In Descent, the very talented poet Lauren Russell shows us how to write what we do not know; to give with grace and dignity, humanity to names on the family tree. Descent is a search for truths felt in one's bones.""--Brenda Coultas, author of The Marvelous Bones of Time: Excavations and Explanations""An audacious, acid, lyrical re-membering that asks, what do we demand of the past, and what to do with its refusal? Russell's deep archive would not answer her back. With Descent, however, she speaks to us. Sit all the way down and listen up.""--Douglas Kearney, author of Sho: Poems""Lauren Russell's stellar new book-length poem [. . .] portrays a rich, Black American ancestral record. Sifting nimbly through all manner of documentation and employing form in revelatory ways, Russell's poems are as much ascent into a present shaped by the past as descent from America's true heroic figures.""--John Keene, author of Punks: New Selected PoemsPraise for What's Hanging on the Hush ""Russell debuts with a collection of sardonic splendor, subversive enlightenment, and remarkable observation about mental illness, ignorance, and the minute interactions that reveal the subtleties of human nature. Russell's experimental and provocative style beautifully amalgamates traditionally non-poetic structures, arranging it all in a sort of controlled chaos. Among her checklists, definitions, brief narratives, and streams of consciousness, her metafictional pieces warrant the most praise.""--Publishers Weekly (starred)"

Praise for A Window That Can Neither Open nor Close “I am in awe of Lauren Russell’s ambitious, feline capacity to make elegant, vast leaps between lyric poems, personal narrative, essay, vivid collages, and inventive concrete verse in this important book. The velveteen, sensuous sonority of her poems and the mineral edge of her pristine prose teach us about longing and erotic fantasy, life-sustaining trans-species relationships, and the ways our great responsibility to each other moves through the neuroatypical bodymind. Russell’s lucid rendering of her experience of autism spectrum disorder and OCD illuminates a private, captivating biography of eros, to imagine a subject glowing with wit, unflinching intelligence, self-reflexive humor. ‘How can / Black Lives Matter / and not your own?’ She asks, offering this book as an insistent answer: it does, it does, it does. This is as much a book of astonishing, vulnerable confession as it is a deft refutation of difficult medical and social histories that have misrecognized her. It returned me to life as a more devoted, curious student, listening at the window that will neither open nor close.”—Divya Victor, author of Curb ""A Window That Can Neither Open nor Close is a book that undoes standardization and sanitizing language through stimming’s poetic repetition, generating ‘eccentrically whorling’ difference. Not open and not closed, too large to fit the frame and too jagged around the edges, this book captures the incompatibility and queer sensibility that accompanies a diagnosis. If identity is narrative, Lauren Russell rewrites the narrative of her own identity by reconfiguring neurotypical language patterns, and offering a book I wish I had read when I was a young neurodivergent writer, finding my way past misperceptions in a world where I did not quite fit, over and over.”—Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, author of before island is volcano “It is when you step into the universe of Lauren Russell’s mind that you realize the inadequacy of the material world. Russell’s bravery and keen instincts are revealed by her innovative approach to the page. Where you find lyric, you find shapes. Where you find shapes, you find images. I’m convinced that there is nothing her poems can’t do.”—Camonghne Felix, author of Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation

"Praise for A Window That Can Neither Open nor Close “I am in awe of Lauren Russell’s ambitious, feline capacity to make elegant, vast leaps between lyric poems, personal narrative, essay, vivid collages, and inventive concrete verse in this important book. The velveteen, sensuous sonority of her poems and the mineral edge of her pristine prose teach us about longing and erotic fantasy, life-sustaining trans-species relationships, and the ways our great responsibility to each other moves through the neuroatypical bodymind. Russell’s lucid rendering of her experience of autism spectrum disorder and OCD illuminates a private, captivating biography of eros, to imagine a subject glowing with wit, unflinching intelligence, self-reflexive humor. ‘How can / Black Lives Matter / and not your own?’ She asks, offering this book as an insistent answer: it does, it does, it does. This is as much a book of astonishing, vulnerable confession as it is a deft refutation of difficult medical and social histories that have misrecognized her. It returned me to life as a more devoted, curious student, listening at the window that will neither open nor close.”—Divya Victor, author of Curb ""A Window That Can Neither Open nor Close is a book that undoes standardization and sanitizing language through stimming’s poetic repetition, generating ‘eccentrically whorling’ difference. Not open and not closed, too large to fit the frame and too jagged around the edges, this book captures the incompatibility and queer sensibility that accompanies a diagnosis. If identity is narrative, Lauren Russell rewrites the narrative of her own identity by reconfiguring neurotypical language patterns, and offering a book I wish I had read when I was a young neurodivergent writer, finding my way past misperceptions in a world where I did not quite fit, over and over.”—Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, author of before island is volcano Praise for Descent “As a poet, Russell is a collector and a seamstress. She fashions not a quilt but a technicolor raincoat. As a sound sculptor, Russell builds in rotations of oration like church or Harryette Mullen, playful and searing in her way.”—RHINO “A triumph of art and honesty that only comes from the devotion to and exploration of one’s own wounds.”—The Rumpus “Russell raises the stakes and shows her mettle. The crafting of the tale is as much about what Lorde has given Russell as it is about what Russell does with the inherited. The result is a poetic, hybrid tour de force that delivers not only the assembled narrative, but accounts of creating the book itself.”—Yona Harvey, author of Hemming the Water “In this haunting, meticulously-crafted book of documentary poetry, Lauren Russell sifts through the tangled materials of history to make space for reimagined ancestral voices, including that of her enslaved great-great-grandmother, Peggy Hubert. Russell is a virtuoso of poetic form, and this book emerges as a radiant collage of prose poetry, lyric fragments, confessions, erasures, photographs, and images of the documents (including the diary of Robert Wallace Hubert, Peggy's enslaver and the father of her children), which form the basis of her research. Descent asks important questions about what we know and how to hold it: ""I do not know the tune, but I will hum / it for you.”—Kiki Petrosino, author of White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia “In Descent, the very talented poet Lauren Russell shows us how to write what we do not know; to give with grace and dignity, humanity to names on the family tree. Descent is a search for truths felt in one’s bones.”—Brenda Coultas, author of The Marvelous Bones of Time: Excavations and Explanations “An audacious, acid, lyrical re-membering that asks, what do we demand of the past, and what to do with its refusal? Russell’s deep archive would not answer her back. With Descent, however, she speaks to us. Sit all the way down and listen up.”—Douglas Kearney, author of Sho: Poems “Lauren Russell’s stellar new book-length poem [. . .] portrays a rich, Black American ancestral record. Sifting nimbly through all manner of documentation and employing form in revelatory ways, Russell’s poems are as much ascent into a present shaped by the past as descent from America’s true heroic figures.”—John Keene, author of Punks: New Selected Poems"

"Praise for Descent “As a poet, Russell is a collector and a seamstress. She fashions not a quilt but a technicolor raincoat. As a sound sculptor, Russell builds in rotations of oration like church or Harryette Mullen, playful and searing in her way.”—RHINO “A triumph of art and honesty that only comes from the devotion to and exploration of one’s own wounds.”—The Rumpus “Russell raises the stakes and shows her mettle. The crafting of the tale is as much about what Lorde has given Russell as it is about what Russell does with the inherited. The result is a poetic, hybrid tour de force that delivers not only the assembled narrative, but accounts of creating the book itself.”—Yona Harvey, author of Hemming the Water “In this haunting, meticulously-crafted book of documentary poetry, Lauren Russell sifts through the tangled materials of history to make space for reimagined ancestral voices, including that of her enslaved great-great-grandmother, Peggy Hubert. Russell is a virtuoso of poetic form, and this book emerges as a radiant collage of prose poetry, lyric fragments, confessions, erasures, photographs, and images of the documents (including the diary of Robert Wallace Hubert, Peggy's enslaver and the father of her children), which form the basis of her research. Descent asks important questions about what we know and how to hold it: ""I do not know the tune, but I will hum / it for you.”—Kiki Petrosino, author of White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia “In Descent, the very talented poet Lauren Russell shows us how to write what we do not know; to give with grace and dignity, humanity to names on the family tree. Descent is a search for truths felt in one’s bones.”—Brenda Coultas, author of The Marvelous Bones of Time: Excavations and Explanations “An audacious, acid, lyrical re-membering that asks, what do we demand of the past, and what to do with its refusal? Russell’s deep archive would not answer her back. With Descent, however, she speaks to us. Sit all the way down and listen up.”—Douglas Kearney, author of Sho: Poems “Lauren Russell’s stellar new book-length poem [. . .] portrays a rich, Black American ancestral record. Sifting nimbly through all manner of documentation and employing form in revelatory ways, Russell’s poems are as much ascent into a present shaped by the past as descent from America’s true heroic figures.”—John Keene, author of Punks: New Selected Poems"

"Praise for A Window That Can Neither Open nor Close A Window That Can Neither Open nor Close is a book that undoes standardization and sanitizing language through stimming’s poetic repetition, generating ‘eccentrically whorling’ difference. Not open and not closed, too large to fit the frame and too jagged around the edges, this book captures the incompatibility and queer sensibility that accompanies a diagnosis. If identity is narrative, Lauren Russell rewrites the narrative of her own identity by reconfiguring neurotypical language patterns, and offering a book I wish I had read when I was a young neurodivergent writer, finding my way past misperceptions in a world where I did not quite fit, over and over.”—Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, author of before island is volcano Praise for Descent “As a poet, Russell is a collector and a seamstress. She fashions not a quilt but a technicolor raincoat. As a sound sculptor, Russell builds in rotations of oration like church or Harryette Mullen, playful and searing in her way.”—RHINO “A triumph of art and honesty that only comes from the devotion to and exploration of one’s own wounds.”—The Rumpus “Russell raises the stakes and shows her mettle. The crafting of the tale is as much about what Lorde has given Russell as it is about what Russell does with the inherited. The result is a poetic, hybrid tour de force that delivers not only the assembled narrative, but accounts of creating the book itself.”—Yona Harvey, author of Hemming the Water “In this haunting, meticulously-crafted book of documentary poetry, Lauren Russell sifts through the tangled materials of history to make space for reimagined ancestral voices, including that of her enslaved great-great-grandmother, Peggy Hubert. Russell is a virtuoso of poetic form, and this book emerges as a radiant collage of prose poetry, lyric fragments, confessions, erasures, photographs, and images of the documents (including the diary of Robert Wallace Hubert, Peggy's enslaver and the father of her children), which form the basis of her research. Descent asks important questions about what we know and how to hold it: ""I do not know the tune, but I will hum / it for you.”—Kiki Petrosino, author of White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia “In Descent, the very talented poet Lauren Russell shows us how to write what we do not know; to give with grace and dignity, humanity to names on the family tree. Descent is a search for truths felt in one’s bones.”—Brenda Coultas, author of The Marvelous Bones of Time: Excavations and Explanations “An audacious, acid, lyrical re-membering that asks, what do we demand of the past, and what to do with its refusal? Russell’s deep archive would not answer her back. With Descent, however, she speaks to us. Sit all the way down and listen up.”—Douglas Kearney, author of Sho: Poems “Lauren Russell’s stellar new book-length poem [. . .] portrays a rich, Black American ancestral record. Sifting nimbly through all manner of documentation and employing form in revelatory ways, Russell’s poems are as much ascent into a present shaped by the past as descent from America’s true heroic figures.”—John Keene, author of Punks: New Selected Poems"

"Praise for Descent “As a poet, Russell is a collector and a seamstress. She fashions not a quilt but a technicolor raincoat. As a sound sculptor, Russell builds in rotations of oration like church or Harryette Mullen, playful and searing in her way.”—RHINO “A triumph of art and honesty that only comes from the devotion to and exploration of one’s own wounds.”—The Rumpus “Russell raises the stakes and shows her mettle. The crafting of the tale is as much about what Lorde has given Russell as it is about what Russell does with the inherited. The result is a poetic, hybrid tour de force that delivers not only the assembled narrative, but accounts of creating the book itself.”—Yona Harvey, author of Hemming the Water “In this haunting, meticulously-crafted book of documentary poetry, Lauren Russell sifts through the tangled materials of history to make space for reimagined ancestral voices, including that of her enslaved great-great-grandmother, Peggy Hubert. Russell is a virtuoso of poetic form, and this book emerges as a radiant collage of prose poetry, lyric fragments, confessions, erasures, photographs, and images of the documents (including the diary of Robert Wallace Hubert, Peggy's enslaver and the father of her children), which form the basis of her research. Descent asks important questions about what we know and how to hold it: ""I do not know the tune, but I will hum / it for you.”—Kiki Petrosino, author of White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia “In Descent, the very talented poet Lauren Russell shows us how to write what we do not know; to give with grace and dignity, humanity to names on the family tree. Descent is a search for truths felt in one’s bones.”—Brenda Coultas, author of The Marvelous Bones of Time: Excavations and Explanations “An audacious, acid, lyrical re-membering that asks, what do we demand of the past, and what to do with its refusal? Russell’s deep archive would not answer her back. With Descent, however, she speaks to us. Sit all the way down and listen up.”—Douglas Kearney, author of Sho: Poems “Lauren Russell’s stellar new book-length poem [. . .] portrays a rich, Black American ancestral record. Sifting nimbly through all manner of documentation and employing form in revelatory ways, Russell’s poems are as much ascent into a present shaped by the past as descent from America’s true heroic figures.”—John Keene, author of Punks: New Selected Poems Praise for What’s Hanging on the Hush  “Russell debuts with a collection of sardonic splendor, subversive enlightenment, and remarkable observation about mental illness, ignorance, and the minute interactions that reveal the subtleties of human nature. Russell’s experimental and provocative style beautifully amalgamates traditionally non-poetic structures, arranging it all in a sort of controlled chaos. Among her checklists, definitions, brief narratives, and streams of consciousness, her metafictional pieces warrant the most praise.”—Publishers Weekly (starred)"

Author Information

Lauren Russellis the author ofA Window That Can Neither Open nor Close;Descent,winner of the Poetry Society of America's 2021 Anna Rabinowitz Award; andWhat's Hanging on the Hush. Russell has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Cave Canem, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing,andresidencies from Millay Arts, Ucross, Yaddo, and MacDowell, among others. Her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets'Poem-a-Day,theNew York Times Magazine,Brooklyn Rail,and elsewhere.She is an assistant professor inthe Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and lives in Baltimore with her cats, Cat Jeoffry and Lady Day.

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