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Brazos Bookstore/Inprint Jennifer Grotz Reading

Thursday September 15, 2016 7:00 pm

Where

Brazos Bookstore
2421 Bissonnet Street
Houston, TX 77006 United States
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small Window Left OpenJennifer Grotz, a recipient of an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellowship, received her PhD from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. She is the author of the award-winning poetry collections The Needle and Cusp. Her poetry has appeared in The New Republic, The New Yorker, and Best American Poetry. She teaches at the University of Rochester.

Her new collection, Window Left Open, was published by Graywolf Press earlier this year. Pre-order your copy of Window Left Open for pickup at Brazos Bookstore. 

In these lush, intricately crafted poems, Grotz explores how we can become strange to ourselves through escape, isolation, desire—and by leaving the window open. These poems are full of the sensory pleasures of the natural world and a slowed-down concept of time, as Grotz records the wonders of travel, a sojourn at a French monastery, and the translation of thoughts into words, words into another language, language into this remarkable poetry. Window Left Open is a beautiful and resounding book, one that traces simultaneously the intimacy and the vastness of the world. Adam Zagajewski says, “Jennifer Grotz has successfully reinvented poetry for herself—and for us.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, “When I first read Jennifer Grotz’s ‘Poppies,’ all I could tell you was that I liked its sound…. It was elemental, and I think almost every poem I love is like that for me…. But then I went back and I saw the philosophy at work. Grotz writes of our constant desire to tame the world, and even the righteousness of that desire…. She writes of the anguish that ultimately comes from trying… and then, finally, our sadness at the whole thing. ‘Love is letting the world be half-tamed,’ Grotz writes. I think you could say that about a lot more than just the natural world that she is addressing. That’s a lesson we’re constantly learning.”

We’re proud to join in presenting the Brazos Bookstore/Inprint Readings, which feature at Brazos select writers with new books who have received Inprint fellowships and prizes, participated in the Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series, or taken Inprint Writers Workshops.