Books
BLACK LAKE
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Reviews:
“I’d follow [Emily Skaja] anywhere, and certainly into the abyss.”―Emily Temple, Literary Hub
“Emily Skaja’s poems relentlessly convey the overwhelm of grief in ways that are truly breathtaking. Black Lake is an incredibly accomplished collection.”―Roxane Gay
“Emily Skaja’s Black Lake kaleidoscopes with approaches to the vernacular of a grief so profound that to express it requires a spectrum of voices capable of delicious cynicism, disarming self-exposure, and Plathian acidity, while then metamorphizing into the gothic surreal as language sinks even as it soars: ‘Sorrow on velvet, exquisitely rubied, gone / to rest in an undersea shrine,’ she writes. And ‘Blood / like a whip cracking open a mirror.’ Nothing quite cracks open a mirror, nor shatters the vessel of the body, like the loss of a child, of our dreams for our children. Can poetry hold that? Skaja infers that patriarchal poetry can’t, as she refers to ‘that fucker Ezra Pound,’ has an anxiety dream in which ‘T. S. Eliot found out that I said “The Waste Land” is overrated,’ and testifies to the impotence of ‘reading Rilke & crying.’ Nor can our necrophiliac government, in which she quotes the new president claiming, ‘There’s not enough death,’ even as her body, bleeding not scarlet nor crimson but good ole red, insists on death’s tremulous opposite. What poetry can do, Skaja shows us, even though ‘Poetry Makes Nothing Happen,’ redeems nothing, is accompany us on the deep dive to the very bottom of black lake, not via simile or allegory but through the concrete penetration of a grand, tenacious sorrow. Poetry, too, is as tenacious and grand as spring, yanking us once again from the underworld.”―Diane Seuss, author of Modern Poetry
“Emily Skaja writes grief the way it arrives―sharp, recurring, laced with dark humor and fury―combined with an intelligence that won’t let the body disappear. Nature in Black Lake isn’t just a metaphor that heals everything; it’s a dynamic and parallel presence that runs through these ferociously wild and witty poems―even as they insist that we wrest and reckon with loss.”―Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders
BRUTE
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Reviews:
“What happens when rage and grief transform us, when our bodily fury makes us feel animal? What language do we use to howl such feral moments? These are the questions that animate Skaja’s taut, ferocious debut, Brute. . . . This is a book about survival, and a welcome, confident debut.”―The New York Times Book Review
“[In Brute], the anguish comes from an emotionally abusive lover and the abrupt end of a relationship. As the speaker excavates her grief and disbelief, she slowly moves from self-condemnation to a fiery insistence that she can overcome her boyfriend’s damaging assessments of her worth and reclaim the power she once had. . . . The speaker’s brutal honesty and emotional transformation offer an engrossing guide for anyone dealing with a devastating loss.”―The Washington Post
“Emily Skaja’s [Brute] is lyrical, visceral, sharp like a fang, and filled with lines that pierce and prod and stay embedded inside your skin.”―NYLON
“The first section of [Brute] ends with a poem of exile: self-imposed, absolutely necessary, freeing. . . . There’s everything in this strong debut.”―The Millions
“Emily Skaja reaches for nature in Brute to overcome the loss of an abusive lover, to overcome grief. . . . Skaja knows exactly how to engage nature, readers, and life. Her diverse poetics prove her broad range of skills. She takes risks. . . . All poems in Brute flow with precision and ease.”―The New York Journal of Books
“Skaja’s poems are both primal scream-songs and elegies to the end of a relationship. . . . With relentless, driving energy, Skaja’s poems seek brutal truths while searching for meaningful transformation.”―Booklist
“Emily Skaja’s Brute is at once terrifying and hypnotic, strange and yet profoundly meaningful. . . . Skaja’s strangeness is emotive and as such her complex poetry demands attention and easily enchants readers with the need to know more. Satisfied and panting, the reader is hooked―this collection is nothing short of phenomenal.”―Crab Fat Magazine
“The poems in Emily Skaja’s Brute speak of brutality, of breaking, of endings, of beginnings. Brute is an elegy for a relationship’s end, an intimate excavation, but also, these poems are a rhapsody, a rage. Skaja’s poetry is deft, nimble, willing to inhabit contradictions―‘What is this impulse in me to worship & crucify / anyone who leaves me.’ Each poem is exquisitely crafted, visceral, indelible. Brute will cut right through you, cut deep, but the writing is so assured, so necessary, that you will welcome the wound.”―Roxane Gay
“Brute, though a collection of singular poems, is essentially one long, elegiac howl for the end of a relationship. It never lets up―this living―even when the world as we knew it is crushed. So what do we do with the brokenness? We document it, as Emily Skaja has done in Brute. We sing of the brokenness as we emerge from it. We sing the holy objects, the white moths that fly from our mouths, and we stand with the new, wet earth that has been created with our terrible songs.”―Joy Harjo, judge’s citation for the Walt Whitman Award
Emily Skaja 