1455 kicked off the 2022 Author Series in style, and it was our honor to feature Chelsea B. DesAutels, author of the stunning collection A Dangerous Place.
No suspense necessary: I offer my highest praise for these poems, and recommend this collection with intense enthusiasm. As someone who writes, but also reads, a great deal of poetry, I’m grateful to Chelsea not only for the gorgeous language and a collection that’s challenging in all the best ways; I’d like to acknowledge the craftsmanship of these poems: they find an ideal tone—obviously not light or ephemeral, but also not leaden and impenetrable; these are serious poems that take the act of being read seriously.
When discussing creativity and craft of writing, we typically get pulled into the unsatisfactory vortex of the whole “write what you know” trope, and I confess I’m of two minds: of course we must write what we know or have seen; that’s part of what inspires art. On the other hand, where would we be without leaps of imagination, explorations that expand our minds, etc. Still, I find that certain works clearly taken from lived experience distill a certain vitality and impart a discernible wisdom. There’s a deep, earned wisdom in these pages.
Everyone here is emptying or filling space.
Three times a week, a thunderclap informs the town that Jesus has risen again. Even the dogs learn to ignore the clatter.
I’ve understood twice when to love someone back. Once it was not too late.
(All of the above lines are taken from the long poem “Black Hills,” which is a tour de force–and you can watch the author read it via the video, below.)
A tension that runs brilliantly throughout this work is the close examination (interrogation, even) of the body: what a healthy and functioning body does or is supposed to do (for the mother; for the child) and when a body rebels, with cancer causing the normalcy to implode. One of the things I found –I don’t want to say refreshing with such a serious subject matter, but different, even novel—is how these poems are constantly looking outside the self, in particular to scenes in nature. This works on myriad metaphorical levels, but also manages to at once lessen the pathos and deepen the emotional import. Put another way, much writing about topics like cancer and possible death are heavy, insular, even egotistic, and understandably so, to a certain extent. A Dangerous Place is deeply personal, but consistently reflects a life of travel, observation, pain, and the ecstasy of life–and living it with purpose. It is, above all, a generous collection that will reward repeated readings.
As always, it’s 1455’s pleasure to partner with D.C.’s historic The Potter’s House and we encourage you to support them (and independent booksellers) by procuring your copy of A Dangerous Place directly from their online store.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Chelsea B. DesAutels is a poet living in Minneapolis. Her debut poetry collection, A Dangerous Place, released from Sarabande Books in October 2021. A Tin House Scholar, winner of the Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize from the Missouri Review, and a National Poetry Series finalist, Chelsea earned her MFA from the University of Houston, where she was the recipient of the Inprint Verlaine Prize in Poetry and served as Poetry Editor of Gulf Coast. In addition to her MFA, Chelsea holds degrees from the University of Minnesota Law School and Wellesley College.
ABOUT A Dangerous Place:
Early in her powerful, affecting debut, DesAutels writes: “I always mention gratitude because / people like that ending.” Unflinching in its candor, this is the story of a woman with two swellings in her belly: a nascent baby, and a cancerous tumor. The poet could focus on the particulars of the medical case, using language from a traditional illness narrative. Instead, she gives us the basics, then gathers up surprising and expansive material from various landscapes— the Black Hills, the prairies of Texas, the mountains, switchgrass, and, especially, the neighboring buffalo, to which she feels a profound connection. DesAutels’s metaphors strike home; they are counterpoints, balm to the uncertainty and grief that make us uncomfortable. The book moves elegantly from its dark beginnings to a transcendent thankfulness. With healing lyricism, she writes: “And I imagine the white sheets as heron wings. / And the whirring machines are white eggs. / And the worried voices are sunlight on water.”
