Asylum: A personal, historical, natural inquiry in 103 lyric sections

by Jill Bialosky

Overview

This book-length sequence by the critically acclaimed poet is a seeker's story, revealing personal and historical traumas and how we search for understanding and meaning in their wake.

In Asylum, poet Jill Bialosky embarks on a Virgilian journey, building a narrative sequence from 103 elegant poems and prose sections that cohere in their intensity and their need to explore darkness and sustenance both.

Taken together, these piercing pieces--about her nascent calling as a writer; her sister's suicide and its still unfolding aftermath; the horror unleashed by World War II; the life cycle of the monarch butterfly; and the woods where she seeks asylum--form a moving story, powerfully braiding despair, survival, and hope. Bialosky considers the oppositions that govern us: our reason and unreason, our need to preserve and destruct. "What are words when they meet the action of what they attempt to modify?" she asks, exploring the possible salve of language in the face of pain and grief.

What Asylum delivers is a form of hard-won grace and an awareness of the cost of extreme violence, inexplicable loss, and the miraculous cycles of life, in work that carries Bialosky's art to a new level of urgency and achievement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525657101
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/04/2020
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

JILL BIALOSKY is the author of four acclaimed collections of poetry, most recently The Players; three critically acclaimed novels, most recently, The Prize; a New York Times best-selling memoir, History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life; and Poetry Will Save Your Life: A Memoir. Her poems and essays have appeared in Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, and The Paris Review, among others. She coedited, with Helen Schulman, the anthology Wanting a Child. She is executive editor and vice president at W. W. Norton & Company. Her work has been a finalist for the James Laughlin Prize, the Patterson Prize, and Books for a Better Life. In 2014, she was honored by the Poetry Society of America for her distinguished contribution to poetry. She lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Prelude 3

Part I.

I There she is, the woman who once inhabited 7

II Even the rats will not emerge in the whiteout- 8

III It was snowing in St. Petersburg … 9

IV Together we circled 10

V Of the childless mother 11

VI After the wind tore up 12

VII Each season with its privileges 13

VIII We can't see anything but ice 14

IX & in the mornings sometimes awoke so cold 15

X We were told there were things hidden from us 16

XI In Iowa City, the restaurant 17

XII Why I thought I needed to rent a third-floor attic 18

XIII Once a bird flew in, its wings 19

XIV Faith turned on the milkman who delivered 20

XV Because she believed (she was like this) 21

XVI From my window on the third floor 22

XVII I knew by then 23

XVIII Like a flock of dispossessed 24

XIX Some cultures believed … 25

XX If someone was kind enough … 26

XXI Beneath a canopy 27

XXII Those long afternoons we trudged 28

XXIII Washing dishes, occasionally looking out at the wood 29

XXIV & so we looked for patterns … 30

XXV Trees breathe in oxygen … 31

XXVI We wanted him 32

XXVII Pollen, like sperm to humans … 33

XXVIII In tree pose, otherwise known as Vriksasana … 34

XXIX Under microscope, magnifying glass 35

XXX We kept our heads down 36

XXXI Should sleep come 37

Part II.

XXXII Like just awaking 41

XXXIII Suicide isn't an issue that can simply be … 42

XXXIV Carbon monoxide is a dangerous gas … 43

XXXV Every April a requiem, a re-awaking of dawn, the same chorus 44

XXXVI A summer in which my mother's mind 45

XXXVII Marriage of trees 46

XXXVIII Because her mother was sleeping the sleep of the quiescent 47

XXXIX Daffodils, survivors, of the cruellest month 48

XL When he was small 49

XLI The boy who arrived 50

XLII Like the snap of a branch 51

XLIII Because it was Christmas & I was home 52

XLIV Turquoise plates extremely rare, as the orange footed 53

Part III.

XLV Because the Nile River ran red with blood 57

XLVI Because gods are threatening to tear down branches 58

XLVII Friends take turns 59

XLVIII What I saw were naked women … 60

XLIX Another spray of violence 61

L What are words when they meet the action 62

LI Fire is 1/60 of hell, honey is 1/60 of the manna, Shabbat is 1/60 63

LII Pollen is everywhere 64

LIII Pretty, pretty robin! 65

LIV Hustling her new book on NPR, a marriage counselor 66

LV Snow of childhood 67

LVI In Yoga class the teacher says 68

Part IV.

LVII To avoid the perils 71

LVIII I don't know if I was still in dream 72

LIX A pigeon flew overhead 73

LX Once we name it … 74

LXI Metamorphized into trees 75

LXII What if it is those who survive … 76

LXIII The wife of a friend 77

LXIV This family did not return to the city in which the fire started 78

LXV Because the only way 79

LXVI An iPhone buzzes 80

LXVII In basements, backseats of cars 81

LXVIII I was washing dishes in the sink 82

LXIX We can see the window she peered out 83

LXX Listening to Symphony Hall 84

LXXI One winter, years later, after the transmission blew 85

Part V.

LXXII The monarchs are born. They are smaller this year. 89

LXXIII Butterflies sometimes mate as soon as the male emerges 90

LXXIV In Baddha Konasana, otherwise known as butterfly pose, we sit up straight 91

LXXV Because vines glue to the tree's 92

LXXVI Beneath the soil is an underground system of roots … 93

LXXVII Truth is destiny, says 94

LXXVIII In Warrior One, Virabhadrasana … 95

LXXIX Every year we wrap gilded rhododendron 96

LXXX A drawer of junk jewelry, combs 8c brushes 97

LXXXI And by came an Angel who had a bright key 98

LXXXII Because we did not know 99

LXXXIII The Yoga teacher says we are all unique 100

LXXXIV The winter where the sparrows quieted, in which the snow 101

LXXXV Just like the turning of the clock, ticking away of time 102

LXXXVI In 1939 Jews reached the landmark population … 103

LXXXVII During the blackout, we were alone … 104

LXXXVIII Paul Celan, a Romanian-Jewish poet growing up in the shadow 105

LXXXIX Flail, snap, struggle 106

XC I don't know if they were weeds or flowers … 107

XCI The mind turns inward 108

XCII What of those unable to sleep … 109

XCIII (thoughts, you torment me) 110

XCIV Destiny is bigger 111

XCV Raining, raining, raining, raining 112

XCVI By the pool 113

XCVII The night was dark, no father was there 114

XCVIII Black milk of daybreak we … 115

XCIX Look, here come the cranes … 116

C In which women 117

CI Once due to disease … 118

CII In the primal woods (abandon all hope 119

CIII & relief flooded my fears (breathe) & brought me 120

Notes 123

Acknowledgments 126

Editorial Reviews

National Jewish Book Award Finalist

“Asylum is a searching and epic work of lyric, a prismatic meditation that alternately reflects, rejoices, grieves, rages, hopes, and wonders as it sings . . . At once classical and deeply innovative . . . Bialosky delivers stunning variety in form, structure, scope, and modes of inquiry . . . I found myself reading and re-reading each of my favorite pieces, wanting to map the cosmos constructed by its language.” —Jessica Tanck, Kenyon Review

“Asylum’s form—a hybrid, nonlinear series of numbered, untitled lyric poems and fragments—gives Bialosky’s lyric instincts a more epic platform, allowing her to play daringly and inquisitively with time and place . . . By turns symphonic, operatic, Dantean, intimate, timeless, and mythic, this quietly ambitious project is very much a book for the autumn of 2020.” —Lisa Russ Spaar, Los Angeles Review of Books

"As we grapple with a new normal, Jill Bialosky's poetry might be the antidote we all need. Her new book Asylum, a compilation of prose and poetry, evokes despair, survival—and most importantly, hope." —Katie Couric, Wake Up Call

"Haunted by her sister’s suicide and by political and environmental collapse, Bialosky finds refuge in nature and language, all the ways 'the mind seeks / to keep itself from torture.'" —The New York Times Book Review

“[Asylum] accrues power poem by poem.” —Dan Giancola, The East Hampton Star

“Her most ambitious work to date—demonstrates both searching consciousness about life and its meanings and a careful braiding of literary histories and contemporary influences . . . Inquiry unfolds through these poems as intellectual interest melded with open-hearted curiosity . . . Piecing together narrative from Dante or savoring meaning with Celan in the twentieth century delights the speaker in these poems. Bialosky rigorously grounds these poems in the literary traditions . . . With attention from both the mind and the heart to language’s sonorous resonances, transformation and reimagination are both at hand.” —Julie R. Enszer, Tikkun

“Deeply profound in its exploration of life, death, nature, war, suicide, and spirituality . . . What makes these poems so powerful is Bialosky’s honest and illuminating perspective paired with the solid, but gentle music of her poetic voice.” —Andrea Syzdek, Against the Grain

“The elegiac fifth collection from Bialosky transcends genre, weaving tragedy, language, and perception in a poignant work of personal and public exploration . . . Here she explores language as an all-encompassing source of longing, consolation, redemption, and preservation . . . Erudite and devastating, Bialosky’s timely collection reverberates with a rare empathy and resilience.” —Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

“This graceful, spiraling, often elegiac, always vivid book-length meditation casts shifting light on family, self, and the drama of the living world. Whatever is illuminated, so precisely, so gracefully, is also shadowed. [Bialosky’s] touch is light yet trenchant, her cadence entrancing, her wonder elating, her sorrows chilling . . . We enter ‘asylum of thought / & afterthought,’ the inner precincts of a poet tracing the nexus between mind and body, human and nature, life and death, while sheltering the small flame of hope, so tenuous, so necessary.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist

“Reading Jill Bialosky’s poems feels like taking a slow and lone journey into the depth of the human heart, yet all the while being accompanied and guided by an intimate voice. An urgent and expansive book, Asylum is a must-read for anyone who ponders over life and death and all that comes in between.” —Yiyun Li

“Jill Bialosky’s Asylum is a collection of terse forms and psalms that add up to a powerful, full-throated deliverance. Each trope captures life and death matters—a singing, a keening, within each taut, well-made release. Rather than craving a physical space, asylum is sought in language, metaphor, meditation, yoga, query, and hope. And one of the joys of reading this collection is to feel its poignancy through verbal accretion. Asylum is experimental and, at times, nearly classical, but always intently alive with lyrical truths.” —Yusef Komunyakaa

“Bialosky’s strongest collection to date. So compelling is her vision, so urgent her perceptions, that her grief becomes our grief, her world ours. We are with her on every step of a search that ends in art, and in a language that can save us.” —Grace Schulman

“From personal story of a sister's suicide, to chants and whispers and lullabies assembled in a way as to create a book of days for this moment of terror and elegy, this book investigates into the ability of language to provide answers and comfort at the moment when there is no comfort to be found, and no answers: when all we can do is ‘at the edge of the Hudson to watch the tugboats / & remind ourselves we live on an island of buildings. / The mayor warned us not to go out.’ And yet, the poet insists—beautifully, gracefully, memorably—on seeking a sanctuary: ‘asylum / in which the mind seeks / to keep itself from torture, asylum of thought / & afterthought, asylum / where birds mate & nourish.’ Indeed. May we all find such asylum.” —Ilya Kaminsky

“A refuge; from grief, and from threat of extinction. Bialosky weaves together the big cosmic time of trees and the natural world, with the detailed, apparently ordinary time of one woman’s everyday life. The litany of memory, individual and collective, becomes fugue, becomes mantra. Whether you are a yoga lover, a tree lover, a mother, a reader, a sister, you will find something to love in this luminous collection.” —Sarah Ruhl

From the Publisher

08/01/2020

In her fifth collection, Bialosky (The Players) presents a symphonic poem, a word quilt arranged in five parts and over 100 sections. Ricocheting themes, which return to provide different perspectives, include a sibling's suicide, the rewards and risks of family life, nature (both kind and cruel), and the Holocaust and other mass murders. The best poems utilize repetition to produce an incantatory quality: "snow that dusts/ bridges, highways, roofs,/ …insufferable snow that falls/ on the pots that hold/ the pods of the dead." Two poems set in Russia reveal the sense of dislocation caused by travel, "furloughed from my country, no longer mother to my son,/ wife to my husband, in my dreams always the same age." The book succeeds on many levels. Strongest are the poems on suicide and its permanent but dramatic effects on the family, while prose sections on yoga work less well, pulling readers out of the poem, and several sections consist of only a single line that doesn't always move the poem forward. In the end, though, this collection becomes much more than the sum of its parts. VERDICT Precise language, deft metaphors, and emotional undertones keep audiences invested and sometimes enthralled. Recommended for most collections—Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN

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