The Bone and the Body

reviews! /  by Laura Kochman

Two reviews for The Bone and the Body are live, and it's a really surreal experience. To have a response—to have a reader that I don't already know. Plus I was granted honorary Russian status.

"The poems, and the figures within them, overlap, like a concept album: everything is connected. Each poem feeds a central idea, but more than building a narrative, Kochman creates a feeling."
Read the full review at Sabotage Reviews >

"The Bone and the Body is feverish, up-all-night reading, like stumbling across a photo-realistic depiction of something you thought was a lonely, isolated-to-you experience and lifting groggy head and red eyes hours later feeling both satiated and ravenous."
Read the full review at Fruita Pulp >

 

book birthday! /  by Laura Kochman

Wednesday, May 20 was the official launch for The Bone and the Body, and then I went to New York to read for The Atlas Review, so what I'm saying is that I'm totally exhausted but pleased and proud, and here is the link to purchase the book, and here it is on Goodreads, and the first 20 orders come with letterpress materials (made by me!), and I will write more about this all later.

I will also take pictures of my cat dressed as a bat, so, you know, don't worry.

blurbs! /  by Laura Kochman

 

May is zooming right along. Not only did BatCat finalize the cover and page proofs, but I was gifted these gorgeous, generous words from two women I respect and admire. It means so much to me.



What presides over Kochman's haunting and gorgeous debut is a great IF, cracked with regret and longing. This IF crunches under every line, like leaves or bones. This IF is a home, unnerved and unbeheld. This IF, rafted from nowhere, like the ghosts of gods, like hope, looms mightily over Kochman’s collection. If I ever met this IF on the side of the road I imagine it ancient and chirping like a newborn. I imagine I would kneel down beside it, for Kochman has officially turned the conditional clause holy.

—Sabrina Orah Mark

 
In Laura Kochman’s stunning debut, The Bone and the Body, readers enter a watery space, a seaside house:  a mouth becomes a doorway and the door is open here where you morph into your house and bones, its—and it is wandering. Even your horse runs and you are left parceling out exactly what you founder on, as it is something, yes, something, so felt. Through piercing voicing, you question the tenancy of your house, body, and bones with ferocity and delight. Finally, you and your house are boned to earth with feet that move lyrically and shelter us back into our own frames, our own known hands—some magic here, of this I am certain.

—Shelly Taylor

an interview at Grab the Lapels /  by Laura Kochman

And then, and sitting looking out over the Vermont River, which is frozen, and out at Wantastiquet Mountain, which is frozen. And the light hitting the snow to bounce back up at itself. It's very beautiful here.

Melanie Page at Grab the Lapels was nice enough to interview me, on how/why The Bone and the Body will be handmade, and long poems, and my cat.

When I started writing the poems in The Bone and the Body, I was just following my nose. I got saturated with that speaker and her feelings, and I researched folklore that I had only known peripherally, and I kept finding connections. That’s a thing that I love about writing, the way it spins out and back through itself.

surprise hello book! /  by Laura Kochman

The thing I have been sitting on:
The Bone and the Body will be a flesh/blood/embodied object in the world, published by BatCat Press this spring. It will be handmade and lovely. Can I say it will have a home? A home: a full-length book, in which: prose and verse and oysters and letters and owners and renters and no and chicken feet and the distant woods and sitting right directly down in the sand as it shifts and does not answer.