Niina Pollari is the author of Dead Horse and the translator, from the Finnish, of Tytti Heikkinen's The Warmth of the Taxidermied Animal. She is also an occasional reviewer. Her work can be found at Catapult, LA Review of Books, Pitchfork, and other outlets.
"This book walks a line between poetry and prose, but there's room
for all of it under the name 'poetry.' In this book, Pollari, a
poet and Finnish translator based in North Carolina, renders the
labyrinthine grief of the before, during and after of losing a
child. It is also a book about loss in general, especially when it
comes to surprising desires and expectations, and the complex
nature of the word 'motherhood.'" -Sarah Neilson, The Seattle
Times
"A gorgeous poetry collection that contends with the sudden passing
of a child. Niina Pollari's poems capture the specific, devastating
feelling of fixation: not only on spurts of grief but on the small
strange things you pay attention to in the wake of it, as if your
brain can only hold so much." -Sophia June, NYLON, One of
the Best Books of the Month
"Pollari's writing is expansive, all-encompassing. These poems feel
like a generous act; in sharing her tragedy-not just the sorrow,
but the fierce and enduring love, the moments of pure bliss-Pollari
is offering a legacy, a blindingly beautiful corona surrounding all
that darkness. This book, then, feels like a special, cosmic gift."
-Kristin Iversen, Just Circling Back
"Niina Pollari's Path of Totality, her second collection of
poems, the transcription of before and after one moment-what
precedes and what follows the loss of a child-instructs both maker
and reader how to move through it as a book . . . Like the ritual
spectatorship of a solar eclipse, these poems invite their
readership to watch-while self-consciously navigating the fear that
the narrative, what the poems are 'about,' somehow gets made into
novelty . . . The categories of fact and memory combine in their
dissimilarities to make a new experience for readers and maker
alike." -Christian Wessels, Cleveland Review of Books
"Pollari writes with straightforward, heartbreaking clarity. These
poems are unflinching and powerful yet speak in simple, flat
language that suggests everything can suddenly look different after
a life-changing experience . . . Pollari has suffered the
indescribable and written from that place, showing how fierce love
can be, and how unspeakable grief can be endured." -Publishers
Weekly (starred review)
"This poet speaks from the most terrible grief, losing a child, in
the most direct way possible. When language begins to fail, she
does not fall silent, but moves into a startling metaphorical
knowledge: 'What are you supposed to call the feeling / When you
see a star and realize that it corresponds to a map / That it's
just one point in a huge map / Extending over everything like an
enormous dark skull.' The poems are often not dark or sad. Yet they
all feel achieved by means of an utterly terrible price. When I
read their harrowing truths, I remember the irrefutable necessity
of poetry." -Matthew Zapruder, author of Father's Day and
Why Poetry
"The exquisitely lyric Path of Totality is as gentle and
tender as it is fierce and potent . . . Genre feels less important
than the shape and shaping of language itself, and Path of
Totality is a container woven to fit the content perfectly.
Grief is messy, and the work does not deny that. But there is
nothing chaotic about these poems. They grasp the raw and honorable
honesty that deep sorrow demands, and deliver with startling
clarity and attention the impossible, unending experience of loss,
yes-but also, the vast emotional landscape of human experience."
-Khadijah Queen, author of Anodyne
"It seems impossible this book was written, and with such grace and
startling beauty. Amidst utter devastation and pain-hope, even
humor emerges, and tenderness for others, and the other-than-human.
These poems are the sunflowers growing up through the abyss." -Kate
Zambreno, author of Drifts
"These poems are blisteringly clear, devastated, and oracular, and
they brim with the kindness that comes after terrible
enlightenment." -Sarah Manguso, author of Very Cold People
and 300 Arguments
"You hold this book but this book also holds you . . . This
book is alive, as painful as that might be to its brilliant writer.
It's not much comfort but not much can comfort-comfort is not in
this universe. What suffuses this universe is all the universe
holds despite what, and who, is lost. Am I speaking in code? Any
reader of this book knows what I'm saying about it-to the reader
nothing, not even utter emptiness, is alien. And emptiness is never
utter, though it can be uttered and that sound resembles a splash
of stars, a milky wash of stark existence, consciousness,
connectedness almost unbearably relentless, almost unbearably
beautiful." -Brenda Shaughnessy, author of The Octopus
Museum
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