The Fix
by Lisa Wells
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Pub Date Apr 15 2018 | Archive Date Apr 01 2018
University of Iowa Press | Iowa Poetry Prize
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Description
Proceeding from Hélène Cixous’s charge to “kill the false woman who is preventing the live one from breathing,” The Fix forges that woman’s reckoning with her violent past, with her sexuality, and with a future unmoored from the trappings of domestic life. These poems of lyric beauty and unflinching candor negotiate the terrain of contradictory desire—often to darkly comedic effect. In encounters with strangers in dive bars and on highway shoulders, and through ekphrastic engagement with visionaries like William Blake, José Clemente Orozco, and the Talking Heads, this book seeks the real beneath the dissembling surface. Here, nothing is fixed, but grace arrives by diving into the complicated past in order to find a way to live, now.
“Woman Seated with Thighs Apart”
Often I am permitted to return to this kitchen
tipsy, pinned to the fridge, to the precise
instant the kiss smashed in.
When the jaws of night are grinding
and the double bed is half asleep
the snore beside me syncs
to the traffic light, pulsing red, ragged up
in the linen curtain.
I leak such solicitous sighs
to asphalt, slicked with black ice, high beams speed
over my body whole
while the drugstore weeps its remedy
in strident neon throbs—
I doubt I’ll make it out.
It’s a cold country. It’s the sting of quarantine.
It’s my own two hands working
deep inside the sheets.
Advance Praise
“Full and luscious as a grape before wine-making or a moon before love-making, the poems in The Fix live in a roadside space that’s earthy, sensual, erotic, and wild. Lisa Wells writes by feel, shaping, kneading, and bending the line the way a potter builds a ceramic vessel from the bottom up, coiling around a central idea until it’s solid, visible, and ready to be marveled at.”—D. A. Powell
“The Fix is ruthless, sleepless, vigilant, obsessive: a profound work of mystery and matter, of power and pleasure, in which any singular truth is always just a step ahead, a bit beyond reach, below sight line. This new voice is so strange it sounds familiar, like family unforgivable or a lover who’s never over, or like a kind of food only grown on alien soil but that tastes disturbingly like your childhood. Here, every line is a surprise, a curve, a path this visionary poet cut just this moment for you to travel deep and emerge altered by this, her stark dark knowing. You’ll read this brilliant book again and again looking for the way back from it.”—Brenda Shaughnessy, judge, Iowa Poetry Prize
“The Fix is perfectly executed. It’s always poetry, yet it never strains to be poetry. It’s flush with nervous and yet confidently directed energy. Its most striking moments are never haphazard, but are surprising and indelible. It doesn’t read like a first book, it reads like a book for life.”—Shane McCrae, author, In the Language of My Captor
“Lisa Wells knows all too well that a fix is just a habitual stay against the moment’s decay, and in these corporeal poems equal parts binge and purge, one can only wonder what rough bitch slouches down low to be reborn in a Paradise as dirty and comfy as a trucker’s blown rig.”—Timothy Liu
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781609385477 |
| PRICE | $19.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 70 |
Links
Featured Reviews
Joseph S, Reviewer
An incredible selection of poetry that almost defies description. Vivid in both descriptions and distractions the poet takes the reader on a wild ride from the shoulder of the road to the backroom of a club. Animalistic and sometimes violent the journey continues unabated.
Sometimes the words turn simple:
A seed sleeps till you put it in the ground.
A seed is a box water opens
~ Resurrections II
Other times the words tend to run deep and the meanings blur. The is captured particularly well in ”State of a Fair” blending meanings and playing both on words and events to create a double vision branching in different directions.
Complex yet beautifully written collection of poetry certainly able to hold the the attention and admiration of the reader. A well-done collection deserving of the Iowa Poetry Prize.
Sohinee D, Reviewer
I love poetry and when I came across Lisa Well's new poetry collection, I knew I had to read it.
The poems are of different topics. The flow is also different from poem to poem. Sometimes it's slow and smooth, languid in its flow. Other times, it's fast and wild.
I could visualise the scenes the poet describes through her poem. It did take me some time to truly understand what she was trying to speak of but, that's the beauty of poetry, as you keep reading them again and again, the meaning and the thoughts become clear eventually.
Terri D, Reviewer
This collection of poetry takes the everyday and turns it on its head, exploring from every angle. I enjoyed this collection because it takes a bit of a risk when it comes to word choice and description, putting in words and phrases that quickly let you understand that you don't know where the next line will be going.
Although it is a quick read, it is definitely something that will linger with you awhile.
Lili M, Reviewer
The Fix is a collection of poems I found as utterly engaging. Once you read a poem, you can't help but be excited or wonder what the poet will talk about in the next poem. All the poems describe moments from the poets's life, but they were vividly but creatively described that only a good poet can do. The poet's language was lyrical, musical but sharp. Lisa Wells certainly not only proves she's a poet but also that her words, her beautiful complex words, can hurt and strike deep too as they spoke of something of truth in her and so it became truth to the readers as well. These poems are haunting and I know i'll reread this soon.
And look at that cover. I loved it..I have to have a hard copy for my shelf as I only read this as an e-copy granted to me by the author and publishers thru Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
PS: this indeed deserve the prize it got. :) :)
Anne M, Reviewer
I really enjoyed this collection. Lisa Wells is not a poet I'm familiar with but I will watch out for her in future. Not every poem struck a chord with me but the ones that did really resonated. Let me quote a few lines:-
"In the park adjacent the crematory there is a toddler hidden in the folds of her stroller. Only her hands are visible kneading the air."
"...there's a wound in me and everyone knows you should never trust what comes to you limping."
"...marching bead by worried bead upon my rosary-"
The language is beautiful and the choices of imagery are just perfect and I recommend this if you are looking for a new poet with a little bit of depth but still accessible.
I was given a copy of this book by Netgalley in return for an honest review.
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