“Wildly original, dense with beauty and startle and riotously rich language, these poems explore their subjects—fire and climate, connection to the land and to one another—with urgency and empathy, and acknowledge the many ways we can be capsized by crisis and wonder alike. Worn Smooth between Devourings is an exhilarating collection.”
— Catherine Pierce
“This book captures the lifeblood of our experiences down to each crucial moment and image.”
— Saddiq Dzukogi
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This collection is part social critique, part imaginative biography of enigmatic painter Agnes Martin, and part treatise on the multiplicities of the natural world.
“Perhaps the finest collection of the year…”
“The artist Agnes Martin slips in and out of Lauren Camp’s An Eye in Each Square like a wraith, an invisible companion.”
“The paintings and mind of artist Agnes Martin echo through the very structure of these poems. In fact, Martin is the book’s structure. She is a form like a sonnet is a form. ‘I notice Agnes sits / and frames the room and the room where she sits is built reliable / around her,’ Camp writes, illuminating the fact that ekphrasis is no contrivance. It is a cosmology. These poems are ‘slow and persuasive.’ They move like the sea, mirror the stillness of the sky, mapping and refining a deep interiority.”
— Diane Seuss
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Lauren Camp’s Took House is an astonishing, enchanted world of nature and cityscape, interior terrains, art-making and witnessing all at once.
— Hala Alyan
“The poems knew something about me, something I didn’t know, or couldn’t articulate. The poems did the saying, the impossible saying, for me.”
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“Every time I read Lauren Camp, I’m reminded of how extraordinary she is—the complexities managed with sophistication and grace. This time, Camp honors Mabel Dodge Luhan, creating a myth and culture of her country, orbiting New Mexico with icons D.H. Lawrence, Willa Cather, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Ansel Adams. But the poet’s relationship—in dialogue with her creation—is the book’s main character.”
— Grace Cavalieri
Washington Independent Review of Books
In this collection, Lauren Camp explores the lives of a first-generation Arab-American girl and her Jewish-Iraqi parent. One Hundred Hungers tells overlapping stories of food and ritual, immigration and adaptation, evoking Baghdad in the 1940s at a time when tensions began to emerge along ethnic and religious lines. She also draws upon memories of Sabbath dinners in America to reveal how family culture persists.
“One of the most sensuous books you’ll ever read.”
—Electric Lit
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The volatile compounds at the core of Lauren Camp’s second book are poems of the coiled environment and tremendous loss. She writes, perhaps wryly, perhaps optimistically, “either we’re standing in disordered light before the disappointment, or it’s after.”
“Her work moves us, challenges us and ultimately elevates us.”
— J Journal
“We are immersed in the connections of what is directly in front of us with metaphors that guide us to recognoze where we fit.”
— Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders
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“She takes us on wisdom’s precise road trip, where the emotional and daily news collide and the personal and political cohabit and provide counterpoint. And we are willing travelers.”
— Joan Logghe
“This is a beautiful collection of wide-ranging poems that skillfully and lovingly evoke ‘the wisdom of the messy world.’”
— Valerie Martinez
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