MEET ME HERE AT DAWN
AVAILABLE NOW from YesYes Books and Small Press Distribution and Amazon
PRAISE : "As this marvelous debut blurs the boundary between taboo and convention, secrecy & privacy, I kept thinking of Edward Hopper’s 1959 painting Excursion Into Philosophy, the way the lovers there impart a mix of longing and regret. Like Hopper, Sophie Klahr troubles the line between isolation & intimacy. The results are mature & unflinching. Meet Me Here At Dawn is bittersweet, sensual, & brilliant." — Terrance Hayes
"Sophie Klahr moves through the chambers of the mind & heart like an expert escape artist, keys hidden in the body's coverts are revealed in a 'rush of knowing,' the body's 'first breaking and entering' that feels both clandestine & disclosive. This is poetry of immense vulnerability & fierce mettle; determined, convincing & heroically alive with courage of every kind." — D.A. Powell
REVIEWS: "Meet Me Here at Dawn is a book of scrutiny and of elegy. Klahr moves with grace through topics of infidelity, age, pregnancy, and loss—but it is an uncommon grace of grim determination....In a time when language itself is under increased attack, when telling the truth is jarring and unexpected, this is the poetry we need." - Colorado Review
"Not since Anne Sexton’s Love Poems have I read a book that so unflinchingly captures both the intense passion and the loneliness of an affair.....Klahr sheds light on powerlessness, on an often epic struggle against desire, one that—even with its suggestions of animalism—is supremely human." - Fork & Page
"Klahr's verse is alternatively lush and fiery.....incompleteness and space is something [she] takes advantage of..." - AGNI
"Hypocritical stigmas and double standards are left to wither in the light. Repression and oppression are left to crack under their own insensible weight. Everything is given a level playing field and treated with curiosity. The sucking of a cock and the tonguing of an anus are regarded alongside sliced oranges and flowering fields. You can feel everything as you read." - Angel City Review
"Klahr’s line expands and contracts from poem to poem a song hummed into different jars then unscrewed" - The Bind
ABOUT THE BOOK: Meet Me Here At Dawn is a book careening from hunger to hunger, lyric narratives living in the undertow, where eroticism is tinged with elegy, and gratitude knit with doubt. The poems are missives sent back from a threshold, chronicling disease, the pains of family, and running through it all, the fabric of an extra-marital affair. Meet Me Here At Dawn is the act of standing at the threshold, before the inevitable crossing.
INTERVIEWS | REVIEWS | ETC
INTERVIEWS
american microreviews & interviews
friday live! on NET Nebraska (PBS/NPR)
REVIEWS & FEATURES ON MEET ME HERE AT DAWN
state lines: featured in the San Francisco Chronicle
bustle: Meet Me Here At Dawn featured with Hearth & Hammer
ETCETERA:
cincinnati review: contributor’s feature
prosody, 91.3 WYEP (pittsburgh) reading / interview, 2011
OTHER WRITING by me:
reviews:
the southeast review: reconnaissance by carl phillips
gulf coast: slow lightning by eduardo c. corral
essays:
the rumpus: the last poem i loved: "bolt from the blue" by gregory orr
gulf coast editor's blog: 1. speaking out
___________ VERSUS RECOVERY
CHAPBOOK
A single poem in six sections, _____ Versus Recovery chronicles a woman's committal to a psychiatric ward and subsequent spiraling of memory, as she struggles to break with the world of addiction and grasp rehabilitation. Released from Pilot Books in 2007, this chapbook was handmade in a limited edition of 200, with design, typesetting and assembly by Betsy Wheeler.
excerpt:
Shaped like a brain shaped like a moth
world crashing in heat. pregnant
girl sits dumb in a dirty red
leather armchair on a caving porch
upstairs, someone's begging for it
a pregnant dumb world
upstairs, they say she's begging for it
a dirty red heat
upstairs, nobody's crashing. a listening,
a caving in
( a brain a moth )
praise :
"...risky material with sharp lyricism and an even more impressive sense of control."
- Pittsburgh City Paper ( full review )
"The work of Sophie Klahr is both restless and arresting. This poem doesn't just glow, it illuminates." - Terrance Hayes
"Sophie Klahr has brought back something of beauty from her occupation in the inner circles of the psyche —fragile, broken, stunning." - Nick Flynn
FIND ME
MAIL : sophie.klahr@gmail.com
TWITTER : @sophieklahr
INSTAGRAM : @sophieandthechoices
TINYLETTER : onwards
BLOG : a synonym for living
READINGS
~ upcoming in 2019~
26 feb 2019: Lewisburg, PA: Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts with A. Van Jordan
10 march 2019: Pittsburgh, PA: Free Association Reading Series @ City of Asylum
7 april 2019: Columbus, OH: NECK reading w Ryan Paradiso, Katy Xiong, and Ruth Awad
more spring 2019: TBA
~recent past~
8 feb 2019: NYC: COUPLET Reading Series w Donika Kelly, Monica Ferrell, & friends
22 june 2018: Lincoln, NE: The Aliens Reading Series, Parrish Studios
20 april 2018: Houston, TX: Brazos Bookstore
6 april 2018: Marfa, TX: Blue Mountain Reading Series w Ryan Paradiso & Morgan Eldridge
2 dec 2017: Pittsburgh, PA: White Whale Bookshop w Rachel Mennies & Lauren Russell
18 nov 2017: Miami, FL: Miami Book Fair: "Writing The Unanswerable: Poets on The Body's Journey" (reading & panel)
23 sept 2017: Kansas City, MO: A Common Sense Reading Series, KCAI Crossroads Gallery: Center for Contemporary Practice, w Valerie Hsuing & Mark Tardi
24 may 2017: Pittsburgh, PA: White Whale Bookshop, w Toby Altman & friends
18 may 2017: Brooklyn, NY: Berl's Poetry Bookshop
17 feb 2017: Washington DC; AWP reading w YesYes Books authors, MLK Library
SHINE / FRIENDS
words :
yesyes books matthew siegel corey zeller neck press gigantic sequins
finn menzies jane wong gigantic sequins karina vahitova . nick flynn .
music:
faith eliott cass mccombs westwood brook the beecharmer
nathan phillips drew o'doherty jessica allyn young familiar dan heath .
fashion | photography
waltz ermie . marfa brands . the palatines
allison pharmakis . emma rogers matthew genitempo
video | performance | art | design :
colin chudyk ania diakoff dorothy hoover gary card jesse gegenbach
lauren Indovina . fiona cashell drone alert sutras center for imaginative cartography and research
places | organizations :
art farm the sweat spot the trevor project national resources defense council
democracy now! atlantic center for the arts city of asylum