Sweet Gothic

by Colette Tennant

Overview

The poems in Sweet Gothic weave together themes of adoption, motherhood, yearning, family, and teaching in an intricate pattern that might leave one quivering, as one reviewer attests. As the title Sweet Gothic infers, the book is filled with binaries: light and dark, life and death, lost and found, known and unknown, music and silence. The poem "In Between" suggests we all live somewhere in the middle. This poetry collection negotiates that middle ground. Like her necklace-making ancestor celebrated in the last poem of the book, Tennant strings together these images and narratives in a way that celebrates the power of art and helps us find our place in the midst of the contradictions around us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798385200818
Publisher:	Resource Publications
Publication date:	11/07/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	92
File size:	731 KB

About the Author

Colette Tennant is an English professor in Oregon. She has two previous books of poetry: Commotion of Wings (2010) and Eden and After (2015). Her Religion in The Handmaid’s Tale: A Brief Guide was published in September 2019 to coincide with publication of The Testaments. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and Poetry Ireland Review.

Colette Tennant is an English professor in Oregon. She has two previous books of poetry: Commotion of Wings (2010) and Eden and After (2015). Her Religion in The Handmaid’s Tale: A Brief Guide was published in September 2019 to coincide with publication of The Testaments. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and Poetry Ireland Review.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Sweet Gothic is an exquisite chiaroscuro of grief and grace, loss and integration. As harmony completes a melody through notes that can never reach, this collection invites us into the contradictions of connection and absence. We reckon with what is unsolved and unhealed. We reach deep into our open spaces.”

—Sage Cohen, author of Writing the Life Poetic



“In Sweet Gothic, exquisite details echo from poem to poem, creating a world of generations: a birth mother lost but always called to, a storied sister never met, and students with their quirks of innocence. By turns audacious, funny, elegant, and heartbreaking, these poems search the borders between a family born to and one given, between past and present, but always rooted deeply in Appalachia. An American symphony of a book, Sweet Gothic shows poet Colette Tennant at the height of her powers.”

—Amy Miller, author of Astronauts



“In Sweet Gothic, Colette Tennant gives us a rich, deeply imagined primer to study, to savor. A number of these poems are about her students, and who wouldn’t want to be her student, listening as this collection teaches ‘metaphors for hunger,’ and ‘synonyms for want’? Full of startling leaps, intriguing allusions, and resonant tropes, these poems offer nothing less than the marvels of both wonderment and wondering.”

—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate emerita

Editorial Reviews

Sweet Gothic is an exquisite chiaroscuro of grief and grace, loss and integration. As harmony completes a melody through notes that can never reach, this collection invites us into the contradictions of connection and absence. We reckon with what is unsolved and unhealed. We reach deep into our open spaces.”

—Sage Cohen, author of Writing the Life Poetic



“In Sweet Gothic, exquisite details echo from poem to poem, creating a world of generations: a birth mother lost but always called to, a storied sister never met, and students with their quirks of innocence. By turns audacious, funny, elegant, and heartbreaking, these poems search the borders between a family born to and one given, between past and present, but always rooted deeply in Appalachia. An American symphony of a book, Sweet Gothic shows poet Colette Tennant at the height of her powers.”

—Amy Miller, author of Astronauts



“In Sweet Gothic, Colette Tennant gives us a rich, deeply imagined primer to study, to savor. A number of these poems are about her students, and who wouldn’t want to be her student, listening as this collection teaches ‘metaphors for hunger,’ and ‘synonyms for want’? Full of startling leaps, intriguing allusions, and resonant tropes, these poems offer nothing less than the marvels of both wonderment and wondering.”

—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate emerita

From the Publisher