The Ocean in the Next Room

Auteur

Sarah V. Schweig’s poetry has appeared in Boston Review, Granta, Tin House, and the Yale Review, and her critical essays have appeared in Public Seminar, and Tourniquet Review. Her first book, *Take Nothing with You, *was published by the University of Iowa Press. She works as an editor, studies philosophy, and lives in Portland, Maine with her husband and son.

Texte du rabat

Winner of the Jake Adam York Prize, this collection of poems seeks answers about how to live meaningfully in a world saturated by white noise.

“The question isn’t / what exists,” writes Sarah V. Schweig in her engrossing and prize-winning collection, “The question is what doesn’t / die with us?” Positioned from within the morass of modern-day living, The Ocean in the Next Room searches for the hard, abiding particles of truth buried beneath the mantle of late capitalism. Stillness. Sunsets. The circadian rhythm of trees. These poems guide us to look past content, brands, and relentless jargon to find meaning in those layers of the world that operate without human intervention or interpretation.

In verse that is at once inventive and innately familiar, Schweig unpacks the urge to make art, life, and connections even at the risk of becoming further entangled in the Anthropocene. Profound and clear-sighted, this collection urges us to lift our gazes from our screens and really look at the world around us. If we measure our attentions and sharpen our intentions, if we “try again to write / the truth things,” we might spy something real on the horizon.

Contenu

1.

Toward the Great Unity 1

The Tower 3

Poem on My Birthday 8

Tractatus 10

2.

Five Skeins 19

Meanwhile in our City of Abandon 24

Contingencies (III) 27

Theory of Ash 29

3.

Unaccompanied Human Voice 32

Waves 63

The Blue House 70

Longest Night 71

Notes 73

Acknowledgments 75