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We Contain Landscapes

Poems

ebook
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"Wondrous. . . . We Contain Landscapes introduces a gorgeous, determined, and vibrant new voice to American poetry."—Aria Aber, author of Good Girl

To whom do we belong, and at what cost? Patrycja Humienik's debut poetry collection, We Contain Landscapes, is haunted by questions of desire, borders, and the illusion of national belonging. Bringing music and rich sensory detail to the page, these poems attend to the inextricable link between our bodies and the land. Over six ruminative and lush sections, they survey place and memory, both intergenerationally and through emotional bonds with other immigrant daughters.

Weaving in letters, innovative forms, and meditations on devotion, sexuality, and self-deceit, We Contain Landscapes introduces a speaker who "will not turn away from the ache of this world." For every reader who also harbors a voracious longing to encounter infinite landscapes and ways of being, this incisive collection dreams toward a more expansive idea of kinship—of becoming beloved to one another and ourselves.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 16, 2024
      This reflective debut collection from Humienik begins with a letter to the reader introducing the writer as “the queer daughter of formerly undocumented Polish immigrants, from a country that’s been taken off the map.” In the breathless, dreamlike sequence that follows, each poem bleeds into the next as they trace that journey. Anchor imagery is distilled through the speaker’s dismayed sense of self as an “anchor baby”: “I look up how to say/ anchor in my first language. Once I didn’t need/ to search. Kotwica. My mama gave birth to me/ a month after my parents arrived in the states. Nie mówiła wtedy po angielsku.” Tying herself to “the good girl mast,” she studies her “first language” on Saturdays, and travels from the shore of Lake Michigan to visit relatives in Poland. Eventually, she masters adult survival skills: “Bury the anchor/ Go to the lake/ Arrange the fragments.” Humienik addresses poems to lovers and friends (her “beloveds”), many of whom are also immigrants. Having moved beyond scribbling hearts on fogged train windows, she bonds with the American landscape: “When I am one day buried in the dirt, I offer my frame, tissue, heart. You didn’t ask me to live on like this. I’m asking you” (“Magnolia”). Raw and intimate, these are refreshingly candid poems.

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Languages

  • English

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