Filibuster to Delay a Kiss: And Other Poems

Family was a whitewashed, / milk-toothed word / that couldnt account for the mother / who wept and burnt / the roast if the floor was dirty– / or if it was Tuesday, or there were clouds.

Written in an eloquent and searingly honest voice, these poems address the pain and pleasure of growing up. Courtney Queeney tells intense emotional truths in poetry that is at once personal and universal. She exposes the rawness of a complicated relationship with her mother–She mothered the disorder in me, / this difficulty getting out of bed / and dressing like a real human adult, / trying not to be her daughter–and her attitude toward love expresses both profound longing and erotic dissonance: I translate love from the hush of a hung-up phone / before a body comes to engage me for an hour. And Queeney writes with humor and self-doubt of the conflict between desire and the quest to remain true to oneself–I will fly around the world on an airplane until I arrive at calm. / I will spend my days suspended in air, manufacturing a closure.

Filibuster to Delay a Kiss sounds a new and distinctive note in the symphony of young American poets.

"'In Queeney's passionate, fast-moving first volume, autobiographical poems, sketches of archetypes and pieces about a persona she calls 'the Anti-Leading Lady' describe a childhood and adolescence dominated by a self-dramatizing, unstable and ultimately threatening mother, and a young adulthood marked by Latin American travel, collegiate ambition and an almost frenzied search for love. Some of her best moments concern failed teen sex. Others render declaratory judgments on her family in the manner of Louise Glck or Sylvia Plath: 'Because the mother was an error/ and her house had been a waste/ she sought to lay waste.' The work of self-definition all young poets — and all young people — move through takes place, here, in poems that sometimes stand on their own, but sometimes sound like exercises: 'Courtney Queeney is an anatomy of melancholy/ written in egg white and cipher.' One of very few first books of poetry Random House has published in recent years, Queeney's debut can sometimes sound more promising than achieved. But, even with its rough patches, there may be a following for this gifted and direct writer whose travails many readers will understand. (June)' Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)