{"title":"Keetje Kuipers","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eKeetje Kuipers is the author of four books of poems, all from BOA Editions: \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eBeautiful in the Mouth\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e (2010), which was chosen by Thomas Lux as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize; \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Keys to the Jail\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e (2014); \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eAll Its Charms\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e (2019), which includes poems honored by publication in both The Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies; and \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eLonely Women Make Good Lovers \u003c\/em\u003e(2025)\u003cspan\u003e, winner of the Isabella Gardner Award. Keetje’s poetry and prose have appeared in \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe New York Times, American Poetry Review, Yale Review, VQR, Poetry\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, and over a hundred other magazines. Keetje has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, the Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellow in Poetry at Bread Loaf, the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College, and the recipient of multiple residency fellowships, including PEN Northwest’s Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency. Previously a board member at the National Book Critics Circle, Keetje is currently the Editor of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003ePoetry Northwest\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, and teaches at universities and conferences around the world, including at the dual-language writers’ gathering Under the Volcano in Tepoztlán, Mexico. Her home is in Missoula, Montana, on the land of the Salish and Kalispel peoples and directly at the foot of the Rattlesnake Wilderness Area. She lives there with her wife and their two children, where she co-directs the Headwaters Reading Series for Health \u0026amp; Wellness and keeps an eye out for bears in her backyard.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"beautiful-in-the-mouth","title":"Beautiful in the Mouth","description":"\u003ch4\u003eWinner of the 2009 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize\u003cbr\u003eSelected by Thomas Lux\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat happens when the things we care for—children, lovers, parents, dreams, homes—are taken away? What populates our landscapes and how do we perceive those objects? In her debut collection of poems, \u003ci\u003eBeautiful in the Mouth\u003c\/i\u003e, Keetje Kuipers attempts to answer these questions. Written over the course of five years and a geographic journey spanning Paris to New York to Oregon, Kuipers’ poems examine contemporary female loss in terms of literal and figurative geography: the empty bedroom of a dead child, a clear-cut hillside outside of a logging town. From her own unique perspective, Kuipers continues in the spirit of poets like Elizabeth Bishop to examine how loss forces itself upon unwilling landscapes and how those landscapes must alter to receive that loss.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eRemembering Our Last Meal in New York\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI eat \u003cem\u003echirashizushi\u003c\/em\u003e, peel the raw fish\u003cbr\u003e from their sweet bed of seasoned rice.\u003cbr\u003e I know right now the beaten mares on 59th\u003cbr\u003e stomp slowly at the snowy curb, take great\u003cbr\u003e pitchers of air into their distended lungs\u003cbr\u003e and bloom from between yellowed teeth\u003cbr\u003e white peonies against the trees of Central Park.\u003cbr\u003e I have tried to forget your light, the way it breaks\u003cbr\u003e me open, even now, and makes me speak,\u003cbr\u003e how it glitters in the gutters up and down Eighth Avenue,\u003cbr\u003e swirling in pools of snowmelt, so many\u003cbr\u003e sparkling tea leaves I still read for signs of you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003ePraise for the collection\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“I was immediately struck by the boldness of imagination, the strange cadences, and wild music of these poems. We should be glad that young poets like Keetje Kuipers are making their voices heard not by tearing up the old language but by making the old language new.” \u003cstrong\u003e—Thomas Lux, from the Foreword\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch6\u003eISBN: \u003cspan\u003e978-1-934414-33-0\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003c\/h6\u003e\n\u003ch6\u003e© BOA Editions, Ltd. 2010\u003c\/h6\u003e","brand":"BOA Editions, Ltd.","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":8420054405,"sku":"9781934414330","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0982\/0178\/products\/BeautifulInTheMouth.jpg?v=1527683181"},{"product_id":"the-keys-to-the-jail","title":"The Keys to the Jail","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eThe Keys to the Jail continues Elizabeth Bishop’s tradition of the art of losing, but delves deeper, asking the question of who is to blame for all we’ve lost. Keetje Kuipers’s new \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003ecollection calls us to reexamine the harsh words of failed love, the aging of a once-beautiful body, and our own voracious desires. Kuipers is a poet of daring leaps and unflinching observations, whose richly-textured lyrics travel from Montana’s great wildernesses to the ocean-fogged streets of San Francisco as they search out the heart that’s lost its way.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e“\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of Us Can't Live Like This\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e”\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe might be unhappy for the rest\u003cbr\u003eof our lives. It\u003cspan\u003e’\u003c\/span\u003es not inconceivable -- \u003cbr\u003ethe skiff of dust on your hands, the slow\u003cbr\u003esmelting of years. How would I know\u003cbr\u003eif you call me\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003edarling\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ein your sleep?\u003cbr\u003eA promise is a train lying in a field\u003cbr\u003efor decades: we take pictures of the weeds\u003cbr\u003ethat flower around it and talk about the days\u003cbr\u003ewhen it arrived with a whistle of steam.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePraise for \u003cem\u003eThe Keys to the Jail\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"\u003e“Keetje Kuipers’s poems are daring, formally beautiful and driven by rich imagery and startling ideas.”\u003cstrong\u003e—Tracy K. Smith\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"\u003e“Quietly ferocious, \u003cem\u003eThe Keys to the Jail\u003c\/em\u003e is full of love and after-love poems that come clad with ‘bell[ies] of rusted steel.’ These poems are not afraid to feel, not afraid of desire or beauty or the inevitability of their respective undoings, not afraid ‘to eat the filter on the cigarette.’ Yet there is such generosity here in the ‘repenned’ landscape—out among the wolves and ghosts, the rodeo queens and Dairy Queens—that we are allowed to glean from hunger, a form of contentment, and still welcome the cavernous desire for more.”\u003cstrong\u003e—Elyse Fenton \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e About the Author\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"\u003eKeetje Kuipers’s debut collection, \u003cem\u003eBeautiful in the Mouth\u003c\/em\u003e, won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Kuipers holds a BA from Swarthmore College and an MFA from the University of Oregon. Her poetry appears widely in such venues as \u003cem\u003eAmerican Poetry Review, Indiana Review\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eJubilat\u003c\/em\u003e. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and Oregon Literary Arts. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Kuipers is currently an assistant professor at Auburn University.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"\u003eISBN: 9781938160264\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BOA Editions, Ltd.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":8420284805,"sku":"9781938160264","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0982\/0178\/products\/THE_KEYS_TO.jpg?v=1527683595"},{"product_id":"all-its-charms","title":"All Its Charms","description":"\u003cp\u003eA luminous new collection from Keetje Kuipers, \u003cem\u003eAll Its Charms\u003c\/em\u003e is a fearless and transformative reckoning of identity. By turns tender and raw, these poems chronicle Kuipers’s decision to become a single mother by choice, her marriage to the woman she first fell in love with more than a decade before giving birth to her daughter, and her family’s struggle to bring another child into their lives. \u003cem\u003eAll Its Charms\u003c\/em\u003e is about much more than the reinvention of the American family—it’s about transformation, desire, and who we can become when we move past who we thought we would be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eLandscape with Sage and the Names of My Children\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI picked all the flowers, I palmed all the stones.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI dropped the nameless insects onto my tongue\u003cbr\u003eand felt their black wings unfurl. I held the dead\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebuck by his antlers and dragged him through the sage, \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ebrought my teeth to the tender bridge of ribs and fed\u003cbr\u003euntil the glossy maggots overtook me. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI climbed the red rocks robed in their red dust. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI put the earth—all its charms—within me, \u003cbr\u003einto each waiting pocket. Lip and ear. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat will happen when my body can no longer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehold this fragrant salt, its hardened tears, \u003cbr\u003einside? Let mine into the dirt. The names\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI’ve chosen for my children are already fast\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eacross the sky like the ochre feathers that frame\u003cbr\u003ethe blackbird’s shrug. There is no such thing\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eas a scar, no matter how much I want\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto be one. Every birth—even the wings\u003cbr\u003eof the caddis lifting from the river\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ein a shroud—a momentary hunger.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003ePraise for Keetje Kuipers and \u003cem\u003eAll Its Charms\u003c\/em\u003e \u003cscript src=\"\/\/lithub.com\/b\/v1\/bookmarks.js?ver=1.3\"\u003e\u003c\/script\u003e\n\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"bm-reviews\" data-isbn=\"9781942683766\" data-width=\"auto\" data-link=\"true\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e“A precise and elegant look at motherhood, love, and what it means to live.” —\u003ci\u003eSeattle Met\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Keetje Kuipers’s poems are daring, formally beautiful, and driven by rich imagery and startling ideas.” \u003cb\u003e—Tracy K. Smith, U.S. Poet Laureate, author of \u003ci\u003eWade in the Water\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e “Keetje Kuipers’s \u003ci\u003eAll Its Charms\u003c\/i\u003e is one of the finest books of poetry I know. It springs from the land of the American West like a cottonwood tree or a pronghorn calf and shimmers before us. Her exquisite ear makes each poem strike notes of delight that surprise, and her voice beguiles whether speaking to an invisible unbegotten girl, or seeing ‘the nasturtiums sweating on the vine,’ or hearing a father’s ‘tin pan trembling heart.’ Over and over again the poet sings and causes some bristling elegant new thing to appear before us. It is that ancient impossible magic that charms water from stones and makes art endure. Here is a perfect book of poems.” \u003cb\u003e—Steve Scafidi, author of \u003ci\u003eTo the Bramble and the Briar\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“\u003c\/span\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eAll Its Charms\u003c\/em\u003e, the third volume from this remarkable poet, we enter with serious pleasure into an unfolding tapestry of resourceful and intelligent figuration, her gorgeous language tying together elements of the natural world with the glorious ether of the metaphysical. Connecting body to landscape, seaspawn and seawrack to striations of the uterus, baby to the blossom of milk from her breast, Kuipers is a Lucretius of motherhood and sexuality, seeking consolation not for the limit of death, but from the trials of incarnation, tasting their splendor on skin and tangles of hair emanating from love’s body. Her poetry is a garland of milk petalled down her shirtfront, the page of life she’s written on the body. She makes me feel... She makes me feel like a natural woman.\u003cspan\u003e”\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cb\u003e— Garrett Hongo, author of \u003ci\u003eCoral Road\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“I exited \u003ci\u003eAll Its Charms\u003c\/i\u003e begrudgingly, so charmed was I by the world inside its pages. Keetje Kuipers delights in the usually overlooked moments in nature and human nature—the small town drag show, the clear cut landscape with ‘yellow Cat dozers popping up on distant hillsides \/ like morels to be collected after the first warm days,’ the daughter's spilled juice the speaker wipes with ‘the old plaid boxers of the man I thought I'd marry.’ In these small moments, she locates our big truths. Her vision is original, and her voice—precise, questioning, sensual, wry—is one I'd follow anywhere. This book is a delicious accomplishment.” \u003cb\u003e—Beth Ann Fennelly, author of \u003ci\u003eHeating \u0026amp; Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“\u0026gt;“Keetje Kuipers’s luminous new collection more than fulfills its title’s promise. Kuipers works powerful lyric magic, transforming bodies— human and animal, living and dead— into rivers, trees, molten glass, angels, ‘a cup of coldening cider.’ Landscapes too undergo metamorphoses, ‘the sidewalk grows a golden fur’; ‘magnolias collapse their heavy bosoms.’ Time itself comes alive, ‘the last fleshy hours of another day ripening…’ In voluptuous detail, Kuipers describes her own pregnancy and motherhood. Her breastmilk is ‘ a sticky flower blooming,’ a nursing bra ‘flapping and fearless, one wing taking flight…’ Even when she’s describing death, her images delight, maggots are ‘glossy’ a sparrow’s heart ‘a jewel hidden in haste.’ An awareness of life’s fragility, of the passage of time, runs through these poems, yet the reader feels the pulse of life’s robust insistence.  \u003cem\u003eAll Its Charms\u003c\/em\u003e is a book of ‘plentitude, mass, sweetness contained.’” \u003cb\u003e—Ellen Bass, author of \u003ci\u003eLike a Beggar\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Keetje Kuipers's collection charms not with flattery, but more like a good friend who cares enough to tell the hand-to-God truth to your face. This flint-eyed but tender honesty comes across in Kuipers’s minute observations of the American landscape as well as of the pleasures and disappointments of the body. The poems in \u003ci\u003eAll Its Charms\u003c\/i\u003e are also bracingly candid about the polarities of parenthood: the movement between joy at new life and fear at the army of small, lurking dangers that threaten it. The language and images may be startling in these pages, but the insights are austere and lay bare a necessary corner of the human world.” \u003cb\u003e—Iain Haley Pollock, author of \u003ci\u003eGhost, like a Place \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI find something new to love every time I open this book. \u003ci\u003eAll Its Charms\u003c\/i\u003e is a collection of poems from a wonderful poet at the height of her powers. It is a book to be read in a sitting, then revisited, again and again, slowly, and savored.” \u003cb\u003eChris La Tray, \u003ci\u003eThe Missoulian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch6\u003e\u003cspan\u003e© BOA Editions, Ltd. 2019\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/h6\u003e","brand":"BOA Editions, Ltd.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":12554962960465,"sku":"","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0982\/0178\/products\/AllItsCharms_CVR-web.jpg?v=1538569384"},{"product_id":"lonely-woman","title":"Lonely Women Make Good Lovers","description":"\u003ch4\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAudiobook Available Now!\u003ciframe width=\"100%\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/soundcloud%253Atracks%253A2380461990\u0026amp;color=%23ff5500\u0026amp;auto_play=false\u0026amp;hide_related=false\u0026amp;show_comments=true\u0026amp;show_user=true\u0026amp;show_reposts=false\u0026amp;show_teaser=true\u0026amp;visual=true\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc; line-break: anywhere; word-break: normal; overflow: hidden; white-space: nowrap; text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif; font-weight: 100;\"\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/justine-alfano\" title=\"BOA Editions\" style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eBOA Editions\u003c\/a\u003e · \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/justine-alfano\/lonely-women-make-good-lovers\" title=\"Lonely Women Make Good Lovers - Sample\" style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eLonely Women Make Good Lovers - Sample\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe daring and deeply sexy poems in \u003cem\u003eLonely Women Make Good Lovers \u003c\/em\u003eare bold with the embodied, earthy, and startlingly sensual. \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese unforgettable love poems—queer, complicated, and almost always compromised—engage a poetics of humility, leaning into the painful tendernesses of unbridgeable distance. As Kuipers writes, love is a question “defined not by what we \/ cannot know of the world but what we cannot know of ourselves.” These poems write into that intricate webbing between us, holding space for an “I” that is permeable, that can be touched and changed by those we make our lives with.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this book, astonishingly intimate poems of marriage collide with the fetishization of freedom and the terror of desire. At times valiant and at others self-excoriating, they are flush with the hard-won knowledge of the difficulties and joys of living in relation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003ePraise for \u003cem\u003eLonely Women Make Good Lovers\u003c\/em\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Kuipers’s wickedly erotic and ingenious fourth collection...tackles love in its varied forms with originality and hard-won wisdom (Apr 2024).\" \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e—Publishers Weekly, starred review\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“The poems are elegant, earthy, and pertinent. Kuipers moves language marvelously, and I love her understatedness, making lyrics of what could be ‘politicized’ texts, which are all the more persuasive for the transformation.” \u003cstrong\u003e—Marilyn Hacker, National Book Award and PEN\/Voelcker Award-winner\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“How does romantic love bring us together—or isolate, or confound? What if there's a baby on the way? What if we come to each other naked as birds in flight, as stripped logs, as old photographs, as pure ideas? What does a grown-up, clear, thoughtful, emotionally available, gifted lesbian poet get when— decades after Adrienne Rich—she comes up, still wearing her tanks, and takes her mask off, after the proverbial wreck, and makes ‘a pact with the world,’ with her wife, with their earth and air? This poet is your poet. Here are your poems.” \u003cstrong\u003e—Stephanie Burt, author of \u003cem\u003eWe Are Mermaids\u003c\/em\u003e and Professor of English at Harvard University\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Keetje Kuipers’ \u003cem\u003eLonely Women Make Good Lovers\u003c\/em\u003e is a staggering, unpredictable, and inexorable collection. Caught in the nexus of hunger and ruin, Kuipers’ speaker explores the atmosphere between what she knows or almost knows and what cannot be explained. Recognition of the self, of others, Kuipers shows us, is a practice. A compelling read, these poems are nimble and vulnerable, mapping a return to the self, a return to longing, a return to the archive of what the body remembers.” \u003cstrong\u003e—Donika Kelly, Kate Tufts Discovery Award-winner and author of \u003cem\u003eThe Renunciations\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BOA Editions, Ltd.","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46710430826725,"sku":"","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Ebook","offer_id":46710430859493,"sku":"","price":5.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":46724687036645,"sku":"","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":52087525540069,"sku":null,"price":5.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0982\/0178\/files\/LonelyWomenMakeGoodLovers_FrontCover_SS25.jpg?v=1729276219"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0982\/0178\/collections\/KKuipers2018_Credit-FionaMargo-min_1.jpg?v=1742406756","url":"https:\/\/shop.boaeditions.org\/collections\/keetje-kuipers.oembed","provider":"Boa Editions","version":"1.0","type":"link"}