House of Water

by Matthew Nienow

Overview

This debut highlights fatherhood at its peak as it juggles the uncertainty and deeper meaning of everyday life. The hesitant, yet curious voice of the poems are deeply entrenched in the familial, yet also refreshingly open about the crush one feels when their ideals crash down. How does one build a life, only to be redirected and start anew?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938584695
Publisher:	Alice James Books
Publication date:	10/17/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	100
File size:	582 KB

About the Author

Matthew Nienow lives in Port Townsend, Washington with his wife and two sons, where he builds boats and custom wooden paddle boards. His poems have appeared in Best New Poets (2007 and 2012), New England Review and Poetry, which awarded him a 2013 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship. He has also received fellowships, grants and support from the National Endowment for the Arts (2011 Fellowship), the Elizabeth George Foundation, Artist Trust of Washington State, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and 4Culture of Seattle.

Editorial Reviews

09/19/2016
In his debut collection, Nienow, a boat maker and 2013 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship recipient, navigates the existential void between disappointment and determination as he documents the construction of a boat. A new father, Nienow finds his fortunes fluctuating in “the days of one step forward, four steps back.” Building something requires an array of tools, a hunger to create, and an unending wellspring of patience, because everything will be “erased at least once, every line redrawn.” To that end, Nienow echoes Robert Pinsky’s “want bone” with his “making-bone,” a chisel that “asks to be put to task.” The metaphorical space of the poems becomes clear in the “work of nails and arcs/ from which the boat rises.” It’s also there in moments of adversity, as when the boat springs a leak and “everything has been pushed to the middle of the room/ like a raft of upholstery in a pond of wood.” These poems are meant to be read aloud; Nienow’s lyrics fit together with watertight precision as he praises labor and the act of trudging through when disaster strikes: “That it works makes me want to work. The work, it carves that want away.” (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly