Overview

With precise and haunting language, Anastasia Stelse's debut poetry collection, Haunch High Snow, excavates personal and familial history. Her speakers collect and catalogue memories, people, and bones, in an attempt to understand how they fit together. While the poems span time and location, the landscape of rural Wisconsin and the house there returns again and again as a central force. There, a subtle violence thrums within the silence, an undertow of mortality highlighted by interactions with nature. A hunter feels his shot reverberate as ""air and crystals of ice crack from the tree."" The children thrust ""miniature fists in murky water, pulling up palms / full of mud full of critters."" The personal in these moments dances alongside the historical with a series of persona poems voiced by a resurrectionist and his network, by gods, by the sacrificed. These poems dig into the present, the past, the intricate threads that hold everything together.

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9781965784020

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Reviews

Were I of greater birth I would not be here, but there is no other place for the common, so I drink sick-sweet honey from the pool of Lethe, forget who I was, who I am. from ΑΘΗΝΑΙΣ PAGE 4, LINES 26-30 With precise and haunting language, Anastasia Stelse's debut poetry collection, Haunch High Snow, excavates personal and familial history. Her speakers collect and catalogue memories, people, and bones, in an attempt to understand how they fit together. While the poems span time and location, the landscape of rural Wisconsin and the house there returns again and again as a central force. There, a subtle violence thrums within the silence, an undertow of mortality highlighted by interactions with nature. A hunter feels his shot reverberate as ""air and crystals of ice crack from the tree."" The children thrust ""miniature fists in murky water, pulling up palms / full of mud full of critters."" The personal in these moments dances alongside the historical with a series of persona poems voiced by a resurrectionist and his network, by gods, by the sacrificed. These poems dig into the present, the past, the intricate threads that hold everything together. Kurt Lovelace, author of Halfway Between Everywhere

Author Information

Anastasia Stelse returned to Wisconsin after nearly a decade living in the South, a landscape which continues to paint her writing. She holds a BA in Archaeology and Writing from the University of Evansville; an MFA from American University; and a PhD in English, Creative Writing Emphasis from the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers. Primarily a poet, she began as a fiction writer and believes in the importance of multi-genre study and practice as vital components of a writer's education. Her poetry, fiction, and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Poet Lore, Sou'wester, Crab Orchard Review, Narrative, and the Memorious Blog, among others. She currently teaches in the Business Communication Program at the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to writing and teaching, Stelse pursues other creative arts that include painting, sewing, and the creation of pottery.

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