A Window That Can Neither Open Nor Close: Poems, Plots, Chance (Multiverse) - Softcover

Russell, Lauren

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1571315675 ISBN 13: 9781571315670

Publisher: Milkweed Editions, 2024

Synopsis

An intimate and kaleidoscopic entry in the Multiverse series that excavates survival, storytelling, and coming to terms with an unruly mind.

In A Window That Can Neither Open nor Close, the stakes of writing are also the stakes of living. “Though I no longer wanted to die,” writes Lauren Russell, “our first years together were not easy … because I also did not want to live.” From this enigmatic in-between, Russell dives into multitudes: cats and questions; compulsion and devotion; narrative and diagnosis; language and loneliness; scrupulosity and stasis; suicidality and love.

Resisting the neurotypical expectation to choose any one answer arising from her explorations, she invites readers to engage: a pop quiz, a twelve-sided die, an abecedarian confession, a box of mirrors, several idiosyncratic diagnostic tools, and a suite of obsidian waiting rooms. Holding binaries in suspense, Russell seamlessly unfolds and enfolds the various operations of language, moving through forms with the restless brilliance of an architect turned ethicist turned collagist turned origamist. And everything, it seems, finds some way to turn back into poetry.

From psychological evaluation to clickbait, Russell transforms the world’s furious search for explanations into open inquiry. “How flat is the silence in your pocket?” she asks. “Is the inside of a wish an ossuary?” “Do questions stick you to the wall of sociability?” “Did I say I am making my own bestiary?” “What kind of cascade is this?” In a book dedicated to knowing, to not-knowing, and to its readers, Russell pulls back the curtain and invites us in.

About this title

About the Author

Lauren Russell is the author of A Window That Can Neither Open nor Close; Descent, winner of the Poetry Society of America’s 2021 Anna Rabinowitz Award; and What’s Hanging on the Hush. Russell has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Cave Canem, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and residencies from Millay Arts, Ucross, Yaddo, and MacDowell, among others. Her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, the New York Times Magazine, Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and lives in Baltimore with her cats, Cat Jeoffry and Lady Day.

Excerpt. İ Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Are You an Aspie?

Do you have odd hair—for example, multiple whorls?

Does your family refer to you as the “eccentric professor”?

Are you always bumping into things? Are you bothered b

y clothes tags or light touch? Did you bump into

your professorial career through perseveration

on a special interest (known to eccentrics

as a “passion,” “expertise,” or “discipline”)? Do tag

games bother you? Do clothes touch you with light?

Before going somewhere, must you have a picture in mind

so you can prepare ahead of time? Are you

especially disciplined in your one eccentric niche

but not for learning things you have no interest in?

Is your memory like a steel trap,

even for facts you do not understand?

Before going somewhere, do you need to prepare a field guide

or a battle plan? Do you have problems with timing

in conversation? Are your memories traps? In social situations,

do you get stuck in questions like quicksand? Does time

have a problem with your conversation style? Do you stumble

into inappropriate remarks, like tripping over mines?

Do questions stick you to the wall of sociability? Is your sense

of humor unusual and prone to punning? Does appropriate

society give no consideration to your sayings?

Do you talk to yourself ? Do you notice patterns in all things?

How often do people fall prone to your puns?

Would you prefer to look at the wall you are stuck to

instead of making eye contact? Do you talk in patterns

and perseverate in poetry? Do you instinctively fright

at the sound of a motorbike? Are you crucified

by small talk? Did you take the previous

question literally? Have you been told you talk like a robot?

Do you have odd hair, eccentrically whirling?

Edition details

• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1571315675
• ISBN 13: 9781571315670
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208