Synopses & Reviews
The chairs have come in and the crisp yellow thwock of the ball being hit says somehow, now that its fall, Im a memory of myself. My whole old lifeI mourn you sometimes in places you would have been. October The poems in this fierce debut are an attempt to record what matters. As a reporters dispatches, they concern themselves with different forms of desolation: what it means to feel at home in wrecked places and then to experience loneliness and dislocation in the familiar. The collection arcs between internal and external worldsthe disappointment of returning, the guilt and thrill of departure, unexpected encounters in blighted places and, with ruthless observations etched in the sparest lines, the poems in Wideawake Field sharply and movingly navigate the poles of home and away. Eliza Griswold is the recipient of the first Robert I. Friedman Prize in Investigative Journalism and is a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University, where she is at work on a nonfiction book, The Tenth Parallel, also to be published by FSG. The chairs have come in and the crisp yellow thwock of the ball being hit says somehow, now that its fall, Im a memory of myself. My whole old lifeI mourn you sometimes in places you would have been. October The poems in this fierce debut are an attempt to record what matters. As a reporters dispatches, they concern themselves with different forms of desolation: what it means to feel at home in wrecked places and then to experience loneliness and dislocation in the familiar. The collection arcs between internal and external worldsthe disappointment of returning, the guilt and thrill of departure, unexpected encounters in blighted placesand, with ruthless observations etched in the sparest lines, the poems in Wideawake Field sharply and movingly navigate the poles of home and away. A freelance reporter, she has been conducting research throughout Asia for several months; now she was working on an article for Harpers Magazine about prisoners experiences in U.S. detention centers. As the car rolled along, Griswold pullout her notebook. The quince-colored smear / of first light, she wrote, the dove of mud and rubble, / the scrap of frock, torn / in mourning and tied to a grace, / will blow away. / What would feed your eye? This is how Griswold usually composes her poems . . . The poems in Wideawake Field reflect Griswolds ambitious roaming. They take place in Afghanistan and Columbia, in various American cities, in unnamed places, and in places, like Nepalgunj, that youve probably never heard of. Their language is stark and straightforward . . . Inevitably, many of the poems describe desolate or tense scenes, brief moments that seem from an outsiders perspective to be emblematic of struggle in far-off places. In that sense, Griswolds poetry performs a service as vital as her journalismit brings the reader up close to realities he might otherwise never confront.”Amy Rosenberg, Poets & Writers Eliza Griswolds debut collection of poetry, Wideawake Field, radiates through a journalistic eye. Perhaps this is too easy a comment given the authors background in reporting, but its hard to avoid. The short, unornamented lines, terse titles, and quick but conversational rhymes move like field notes, like a dairy kept under fear of forgetting the essentials. Griswolds verse is starkly observational, yet humanly committed. Its impetus might be empirically minded reporting, but these poems allow, via graceful metaphor and astute reflection, the presence of person inside their descriptions of war, isolation, alienation, and family.”Thea Brown, The L Magazine Eliza Griswolds brief poems excel in that most difficult work of the writernot to speak to excess and yet not to say a small thing. Her poems, which treat of both personal intimacy and of the anguish so present now in our trouble-laden world are, at the same time, concise, resonant, empathetic, angry, and luminous.”Mary Oliver Some of the strengths of Eliza Griswolds first book are immediately apparent. They include an assured authority of tone, language of repeatedly astonishing transparency, images that emerge out of each poems invisible source, vivid and revelatory even when they appear to overlap like double exposures. Her subjects are raw, wrenching, and she makes them ours. This is writing of true originality, that seems to have started out knowing where it was going.”W.S. Merwin Eliza Griswold's Wideawake Field is a book of compelling authority by a young poet who already understands, and stands ready to renew, poetry's most ancient tasksto bring the news, to sing the human in the midst of its destruction, to register truths, to open our eyes. The broken world is one world in her poems. She draws tenderness from brutality, an idyll from a panic, and lyric not from interlude, but everywhere.”Susan Stewart
Review
“Eliza Griswolds brief poems excel in that most difficult work of the writer—not to speak to excess and yet not to say a small thing. Her poems, which treat of both personal intimacy and of the anguish so present now in our trouble-laden world are, at the same time, concise, resonant, empathetic, angry, and luminous.”
—Mary Oliver “Some of the strengths of Eliza Griswolds first book are immediately apparent. They include an assured authority of tone, language of repeatedly astonishing transparency, images that emerge out of each poems invisible source, vivid and revelatory even when they appear to overlap like double exposures. Her subjects are raw, wrenching, and she makes them ours. This is writing of true originality, that seems to have started out knowing where it was going.” —W.S. Merwin “Eliza Griswold's Wideawake Field is a book of compelling authority by a young poet who already understands, and stands ready to renew, poetry's most ancient tasks—to bring the news, to sing the human in the midst of its destruction, to register truths, to open our eyes. The broken world is one world in her poems. She draws tenderness from brutality, an idyll from a panic, and lyric not from interlude, but everywhere.” —Susan Stewart
“Evidently this new poet has loved and lost (though of such loving, it is the losing which is disclosed), a good show for lyric verse, as the old poets have demonstrated; but equally evident is Ms Griswolds engagement in the worlds woes, even her possession of them. Such double-dealing results in a distillation of political ressentiment which is a novelty in the annals of our poetry of passion. Who conceives Dickinson conferring an instant of her attention on what occurred at Gettysburg; indeed who expects the accents of Christina Rossetti to sort with the collective griefs of, say, Darfur? Yet hear Griswold:
Im embarrassed to remember
the time before I grew
uncertain about you,
and that I had a right to say
where I had been
and what I saw there.
We must salute the achievement of this poetry not for novelty alone, but for its immediacy of feeling, its recognition of defeat, its stoic joy.” —Richard Howard
Synopsis
The chairs have come in and the crisp yellow thwock of the ball being hit says somehow, now that it's fall, I'm a memory of myself. My whole old life--I mourn you sometimes in places you would have been. --October The poems in this fierce debut are an attempt to record what matters. As a reporter's dispatches, they concern themselves with different forms of desolation: what it means to feel at home in wrecked places and then to experience loneliness and dislocation in the familiar. The collection arcs between internal and external worlds--the disappointment of returning, the guilt and thrill of departure, unexpected encounters in blighted places-- and, with ruthless observations etched in the sparest lines, the poems in Wideawake Field sharply and movingly navigate the poles of home and away.
About the Author
Eliza Griswold is the recipient of the first Robert I. Friedman Prize in Investigative Journalism and is a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University, where she is at work on a nonfiction book, The Tenth Parallel, also to be published by FSG.
Exclusive Essay
Read an exclusive essay by Eliza Griswold