The Gospel of Household Plants

"Brenna Lemieux's a wonder—and it is her sense of wonder for both the natural and intellectual worlds, those slippery worlds we all inhabit, both in our heads and out of doors, that make her poems so profoundly satisfying. Her poems are tender and whimsical, but never precious or cute—her lines are confident and easy, thrilling in their embrace of the off-balance world we all walk through. She's a poet who goes beyond the mere noticing of detail to the delicate labor of seeing all the colors in the many swaths of her experience. The Gospel of Household Plants is a book to immerse yourself in, to revel in, and find yourself changed by." —Allison Joseph "'The thumb, then, is the dragon, / clamped in the wet dungeon so he can't / ignite the palace,' explains 'Thumb-Sucking,' from the marvelous opening section of The Gospel of Household Plants. I can't remember the last time I read a collection so abundant in stories, whether closely remembered or boldly imagined. The poet's craft is always apparent in her pitch-perfect phrasing and her eye for symbols organic to the scene, as when 'The roadside crows swarm the cornstalk, / and church-spire upward, thick and black / as blown cinders.' These lyrics celebrate and interrogate in turn, as our protagonist comes of age, falls in love, and dares to ask: What now? Given Brenna Lemieux's fierce intelligence—'You tell me / I'm crazy, but the right kind of crazy'—her readers can always look forward to the answer." —Sandra Beasley "In this chilling debut, Brenna Lemieux conjures a set of private mythologies, punctuated as the most compelling myths are, with bursts of violence. These poems offer a deep awareness that nature is rarely human sized, even if we can only see it from our anthropocentric perspective. Insects and plants hold a special place for Lemieux because they are unconcerned with the questions of obedience, obligation, discipline, and decorum that recur throughout these poems." —Jason Schneiderman "In Brenna Lemieux's powerful poems, precise and compelling images draw us deep. We witness the succession of generations, the grief of what the poet calls the 'perpetual withdrawal,' the inescapable letting go of this life. This is a striking debut collection." —Peggy Shumaker