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Ghost Fargo
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Selected for the Nightboat Poetry Prize by Franz Wright, Nightboat Books, 2010
"Paula Cisewski says 'Kiss my pathos,' and that's exactly what you want to do when you read this book. Her personal city -- Ghost Fargo -- is part American dystopia, part formal experiment, and an emotionally vivid interior landscape. When I read her I feel like she's talking to me; her voice is hilarious, sad and clear." --Matthew Rohrer
"....If nothing else we have, each one of us, the solitary and unacknowledged duty of witnessing, throughout our lives, in a way no one else possibly could, the absence of our own many past selves. Paula Cisewski speaks from and of this solitary unpaid job with great poignancy and ravishing technical skill. Her book has the desolate mystery and beauty of winter in the American midwest, along with the strange, hard-won hilarity of that place, any human place really. In the end that humor may be all we have to stay alive."
-- Franz Wright
"Paula Cisewski says 'Kiss my pathos,' and that's exactly what you want to do when you read this book. Her personal city -- Ghost Fargo -- is part American dystopia, part formal experiment, and an emotionally vivid interior landscape. When I read her I feel like she's talking to me; her voice is hilarious, sad and clear." --Matthew Rohrer
"....If nothing else we have, each one of us, the solitary and unacknowledged duty of witnessing, throughout our lives, in a way no one else possibly could, the absence of our own many past selves. Paula Cisewski speaks from and of this solitary unpaid job with great poignancy and ravishing technical skill. Her book has the desolate mystery and beauty of winter in the American midwest, along with the strange, hard-won hilarity of that place, any human place really. In the end that humor may be all we have to stay alive."
-- Franz Wright
Upon Arrival
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"Paula Cisewski loves language. Language and metaphor in the face of human heartbreak and desire. 'I am now prepared / to feel my way down the dark sides…' she writes, 'And still, we flew.' Language and metaphor in the face of loneliness and sorrow. 'A trainwreck,' she writes, 'that for eternity never / happens is perfect because / the brakes fail and fail and / still it smokes down / tracks that run through / a small town in me.' Such a refreshing, distinctive first book of poems." --Ralph Angel
"The verbal search for unknown finality is in these poems, the odd little bird who cocks her head to the side while singing to herself is in these poems, and the sound of circulating blood, and all manner of edgy fragile other things that make the reader feel lucky–for listening is inherently lucky, and these poems bear that gift"
--Mary Ruefle
"The book opens with 'All the Way Home' a brilliant, pioneering piece suited for the beginning of the book because it suggests the collection’s underlying purpose as a poetical expedition and gives a colorful glimpse of the poet. Cisewski introduces herself as a feisty and bright writer who embraces her flaws as elements of a jaded perfection…"
--Verse magazine
Two Museums
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Chapbook, MaCaHu Press, 2009.
Or Else What, Asked the Flame
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Scantily Clad Press free e-chap, 2008,
co-authored with Mathias Svalina
co-authored with Mathias Svalina
How Birds Work
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Fuori Editions, 2002.
Limited edition, fine press chapbook.
Out of print.
Limited edition, fine press chapbook.
Out of print.
