Synopses & Reviews
This morning I woke up and I only wanted to tell the truth.
Like, last night was a total error in judgment; I am
mismanaging my life. I'd hire a replacement if one should apply.
There are two girls inside me that have been killed. Nonviolently
snuffed out by persistent doubt and reckless influence. I am taking my
laptop into the tub, I am going to write a letter. To my father, I will say,
forget the medals, I went for medals. This letter becomes a book titled
Continual Failure & Disappointment; my editor will rename it,
Human Achievements. My father will say, the gold, the gold,
but really delights in the calculated leap. I stay quiet and swing low.
Swing low until the sun sets, and I feel free.
Review
"From within these poems we observe a great longing bloom and walk. We reach out while we look at the world through new eyes. Human Achievements explores a contemporary landscape in human isolation, isolation from truth, love, genuine contact and vision." Bianca Stone
Review
"Human Achievements is full of friends, aching, bleeding, feeling fine, the city, and listening. You know the right song can change everything, and can be a conduit for energy or rage? "I look the day right in the eye and tell it to go fuck itself." The right song can also turn you into a ghost." Amy Lawless
Review
"I feel so happy about this book of poetry by Lauren Hunter, "this unremarkable bloom" whose key words are "human" and "achievement." At a time when human is being cast as "without anything," Hunter’s poems remind us that efforts toward beauty, toward imperfect and beautiful thinking, is to be in an actual 'human' place, and that the reason one goes there is in order to love. Human Achievements and the poetry writing it will inspire in me and others will be a barricade against the rapid loss of the human I crave, the human that I’ve taken pleasure in, a human that, without the defense of poets like Lauren Hunter, is ever, in every nanosecond, accelerating toward extinction." Rachel Levitsky
Review
"At once haunted and haunting, Lauren Hunter's multi-vocal and achingly audacious mixture of poetry and prose effectively engages issues of imagination and documentation, memory and displacement, and the crucial, complex ways in which memory itself is like fire." Laurie Sheck
Review
"In her passionate debut collection, Hunter meditates on universal trials of the human experience, contending with rage, desire, and powerlessness. Alternating between verse lyrics and prose poems, she writes confessionally of everyday survival, suffocation in banality, longing for the past, and the performance of wellness. Many poems feature sense-heavy metaphors ("without two hands feel the world a bit further on fire and you have no hose and your mouth is dry you can climb with your knees"); others are more plainspoken narratives ("if I’m asleep, then I’m crying for the things I’ve lost; if I’m awake, I don’t know what they are"); and some blend those traits. Hunter displays an admirable lack of emotional restraint, though it can result in images that don’t quite work: "how about these waterfalls diluting the prairies. they say, well, stop crying. I’m impractical so I also begin blowing my nose." Hunter excels when she conveys her thoughts with clarity while pursuing eccentric metaphors ("when the ufo crashed into our backyard pool and the other kids scattered/ but i pressed against the sliding glass door like/ and what like i’ve not chased boys around the cul-de-sac with knives"). Despite a few missteps, Hunter reveals an immense sensitivity and inner musicality that forecasts more good things to come. (May)" Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Lauren Hunter is a poet, editor and educator living in Durham, North Carolina. She received her MFA in poetry from The New School and is the managing editor for the experimental translation press Telephone. Lauren is the co- founder/curator of Electric Pumas, an occasional reading series/web presence interested in promoting multimedia art by women. Her chapbook, My Own Fires, was released by Brothel Books in 2011. Human Achievements is her first book.