Longlisted for the 2008 ReLit Awards

Whatever their subject — the unwinding of lovers, childhood as the foundation of being, the metaphorical life of everyday objects and events — S.E. Venart’s poems show us a kind of courage that is quotidian. Surviving childhood, surviving failed love, finding solace in the self, and reinvigorating that self: this is the world Venart reveals to us, in all its prescient detail. A honest and lyrical first book.

…The car gained momentum, sped down hills.
Over one tanned sister’s shoulder I saw vivid fields

locked behind white lengths of birch. Wires loped
between attendant poles. Strapped into our seats,

we had in common things we couldn’t get at.
Up on the wires, small birds alighted, fluttered off

as if together they’d all heard
the same charged message.

from “Power Lines”

“Venart’s poetry reveals itself in the world of mysteries that lies between ‘one bright orange next to one bright knife.’ Such is the domestic tension she creates, where home is turned inside out so the familiar becomes unfamiliar. Yet the power of her writing shows how simple things, observed with clarity, are lit from within. This is a book to read, then read again: once for the bright orange and once for the bright knife.”

-Anne Simpson