BOOKS /
Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space
Graywolf Press, May 2024
The loneliness that collects in mirrors and faces—at bedside vigils and in city streets—quickens these metaphysical poems, which are like speculative prescriptions for this common human experience.
PRAISE
"Like their speaker, these poems ‘wander/ the Museum of Useful Life’ making ‘mortal noise’—an unpacking, with comic timing, of the fact that ‘The human condition is made of moisture and heat.’ Urbane, perceptive, and starkly humane, these are poems of quiet alarm, at once companionable and singular."
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The poems in Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space unfold in the company of loneliness, an experience I, too—like the mind at work here—have needed, dreaded, and craved. As attuned to humor as to sorrow, Catherine Barnett finds comfort, story, and the metaphysical in objects I might otherwise not have noticed [...] Like the nucleus of something I have no name for, these poems are charged, unpredictable, exquisite.”
— Dianne Wiest
BOOK EXCERPT
from In Utero and After
I just learned that the perforation of the mouth
happens at four weeks.
You here beside me, decanting spirits
into your own perforation,
did you know that?
I don’t drink much
but seem somehow to have ordered
a shot of amniotic fluid
Everything’s a little milky in this strange light.
It’s too dark in here to study the obituaries,
we can always do that later, in my bed,
where it’s a little warmer.
About the Author
Catherine Barnett is the author of four poetry collections: Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space, Human Hours (winner of the Believer Book Award), The Game of Boxes (winner of the James Laughlin Award), and Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced. A Guggenheim fellow and recipient of an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and letters, she teaches at NYU and works as an independent editor. Read more >