Behind Normalcy

by Burgi Zenhaeusern

Overview

Winner of the Harriss Poetry Prize, judged by series editor Kwame Alexander and 2019 final judge Erica Dawson, Behind Normalcy is the first chapbook by Maryland-based poet Burgi Zenhaeusern. According to Teri Ellen Cross Davis, author of Haint and Poetry Coordinator at the Folger Shakespeare Library, “Behind Normalcy is an opportunity to explore the tense and probing questions we hide behind and hide from in polite society. From the juxtaposition of sending a child off to school as a photographer’s death makes front-page news, to the great aunt the poet knows best by her handmade socks, Zenhaeusern has the patience and the eye to peel back the layers of everyday and reveal the small truths lying beneath. In succinct, pure lines, she documents the quiet beauty of this fragmented and complex world.” Poems in Behind Normalcy have appeared previously in Passager, Forage Poetry, American Poetry Journal, Oversound, Gargoyle, and elsewhere. CityLit Press is the publishing imprint of nonprofit literary arts organization CityLit Project (www.citylitproject.org).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936328246
Publisher:	CityLit Press
Publication date:	03/15/2020
Pages:	78
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.19(d)

Table of Contents

11 / Stirring Polenta

13 / I Can’t Translate My Origins

15 / aubade/s

17 / music box

19 / breakfast on a school day

21 / The Safety of Fear

23 / Great Blue Heron

25 / to a deer in Rock Creek Park

27 / Tête-à-Tête with Mirror

28 / self-portrait as Granatöpfel

31 / [mottled shimmer the remnant]

32 / mango

35 / portrait of grandma as a young woman :: trees in February

37 / At the Bus Stop

39 / Mountain Lake

41 / border/s

43 / Boy on Backseat, Watching

45 / hidden in a grid of equal squares

47 / Leftovers:

49 / Home Décor(um)

51 / At a Red Light

53 / [after days of sun gray]

55 / Catch

57 / Greed

59 / Mass at Easter in the Alps

61 / Rubber Glove

63 / Notes

65 / Acknowledgments

67 / Praise for Behind Normalcy

69 / About the Poet

Editorial Reviews

“With a keen eye for detail and deft use of form, Zenhaeusern writes lovely narratives and lyrics drawing our attention to the urgency of both grief and hope. This is a wonderful collection.”

— Erica Dawson

Author of When Rap Spoke Straight to God

Director, MFA in Creative Writing

University of Tampa

“‘I’m pilfering anything,’ confesses the speaker in Burgi Zenhaeusern’s Behind Normalcy, and it’s true. These poems shimmer with the commonplace—an apple shifting in the bowl, a rubber glove, the bus stop, a plastic shopping bag blown in the wind, our endless wars. In these pages are ordinary moments made to gleam by the poet’s clean attention, formal daring, and quietly startling images. Moments made to gleam by the poet’s zigzag through the day, through memory and the natural world, through the ‘blinding dimness,’ to remind us that the ordinary is only ordinary if we don’t look closely. Come to these poems and let them soothe the blur of days. Let them show you where and why and how ‘the shimmer keeps beckoning.’”

— Molly Spencer

Author of If the House

Professor, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

University of Michigan

“Behind Normalcy is an opportunity to explore the tense and probing questions we hide behind and hide from in polite society. From the juxtaposition of sending a child off to school as a photographer’s death makes front page news, to the great aunt the poet knows best by her handmade socks, Burgi Zenhaeusern has the patience and the eye to peel back the layers of everyday and reveal the small truths lying beneath. In [after days of sun gray] she writes,

sometimes you don’t

see what is

rearing up to speak

from you

until you say it

I am glad she is saying it. In succinct, pure lines, she documents the quiet beauty of this fragmented and complex world.”

— Teri Ellen Cross Davis

Author of Haint

Poetry Coordinator

Folger Shakespeare Library

From the Publisher