Callie Siskel's beautiful and spare poems in Two Minds traverse the delicate yet relentless landscape of grief.... These poems often instigate with a scene from memory or an observation, then they are propelled by the declarative, oftentimes in plain diction and clean syntax.... Maybe in the end, grieving is about the self; as Siskel astutely writes: 'Vanity and grief / are closer than we think. // Grief's call-and-response / a mirror of our own making.' Siskel's poems are wise and thoughtful, quietly evocative.--Victoria Chang, author of Obit

Two Minds is a stunning, singular debut. Deeply compelling, it is the wisest book I know about the ways grieving divides us from ourselves. These exquisitely written poems chart with delicacy and nuance the passage we face entering that hall of mirrors appearing before us after great loss. Yet Two Minds is also a poetic reflection on the wholeness we reconstruct upon reentering the world.... An instant classic.--David St. John, author of The Last Troubadour

In Two Minds, the hungers of loss, love, and familial bonds intersect at the interstices of art and memory. With a palate knife, Callie Siskel scrapes at the raw face of elegy, revealing interior forms on a canvas where the poet's father lives beyond death. Reminiscent of Elizabeth Bishop's One Art, these intimate poems achieve an enduring, painterly resonance that is startling and lucid in language.--Rachel Eliza Griffiths, author of Seeing the Body

Direct but nuanced, tender but fierce, Callie Siskel's Two Minds supposes that if we could see ourselves from just the right angle, we could understand our lives. Born of great loss, these precise lyrics do not aim at consolation alone; no, they struggle eloquently to put the pieces of a life together. Such is the true work of poetry. This is an enormous debut.--Sally Keith, author of The Fact of the Matter

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Pub date: 2024-04-16

Length: 112 pages