unidentified domestic object
Like a "wild canary" in our social coal mine, whose song is "all barb and quip," Heather Newman mixes honesty, indignation, and irreverence with sly wit. The satiric poems in Unidentified Domestic Object teach us to question our complacency, challenge the traditional roles assigned us, and that clarity begins at home. Yet the writing is never strident or didactic - Newman is too pleasure-loving for that. This is an impressive collection that will leave you startled and refreshed.
-Elaine Equi, author, Out of the Blank and The Intangibles
Stunning is the only word I can come up with after immersing myself in the razor-sharp poems of Heather Newman's Unidentified Domestic Object. So many of these pieces orbit nions of safety - how we yearn for it, where we try (and fail) to find it - while wrestling with expectation and the domestic roles women are so often forced into: "First, the fork, then the knife, then the spoon. / Order, propriety, tradition." A deep longing for refuge, both for herself and for all of us, weaves through this collection, as when she writes, "I seek asylum. I see a manger scene / and want to swaddle the world." With a playful, incisive voice, and an authority I'd follow anywhere, Newman sees "past the picket fence," and into the darker heart of things.
-James Crews, author, Turning Toward Grief and Breathing Room
Heather Newman, a poet of playfulness and wit, navigates between "sheer terror" and "comic relief," as she dreams in French, confers with Freud, and sneaks into an espionage novel when no one is looking.
-David Lehman, author, One Hundred Autobiographies and editor, The Best American Poetry
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