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“In Quiet Woman, the voices are anything but. The subject is child, wife, mother, widow, grandmother — the watching and the watched, by each other, strangers, God, as they “swallow” babies and life “whole,” attempting to bridge chasms between life and death. Kalisz’s poems are eggs “protected and refined,” precariously occupying the “vast landscape between hatched and cracked.” Readers are left speculating, as one speaker does, “Do we all carry tombs inside our bellies?”
—Deirdre Fagan
“In one of these stunningly crafted poems of reverence to humanity, painful realities and joyful renewals, Katie Kalisz shows us how ‘We separate our clasped hands in order to open/our separate doors.’ These are poems of tremendous empathy and observation. From selling on Craig’s List to a woman giving birth in Morocco, to finding a gift for a Vegan brother, Quiet Woman reminds us of life’s extraordinary contradictions and “How effortless love can sometimes seem.”
—Joy Gaines-Friedler, author of Capture Theory
Katie Kalisz is a Professor in the English department at Grand Rapids Community College, where she teaches composition and creative writing. She holds degrees from the University of Michigan, Loyola University of Chicago, and Queens University of Charlotte. She lives in Michigan with her husband and their three children.
“In Quiet Woman, the voices are anything but. The subject is child, wife, mother, widow, grandmother — the watching and the watched, by each other, strangers, God, as they “swallow” babies and life “whole,” attempting to bridge chasms between life and death. Kalisz’s poems are eggs “protected and refined,” precariously occupying the “vast landscape between hatched and cracked.” Readers are left speculating, as one speaker does, “Do we all carry tombs inside our bellies?”
—Deirdre Fagan
“In one of these stunningly crafted poems of reverence to humanity, painful realities and joyful renewals, Katie Kalisz shows us how ‘We separate our clasped hands in order to open/our separate doors.’ These are poems of tremendous empathy and observation. From selling on Craig’s List to a woman giving birth in Morocco, to finding a gift for a Vegan brother, Quiet Woman reminds us of life’s extraordinary contradictions and “How effortless love can sometimes seem.”
—Joy Gaines-Friedler, author of Capture Theory
Katie Kalisz is a Professor in the English department at Grand Rapids Community College, where she teaches composition and creative writing. She holds degrees from the University of Michigan, Loyola University of Chicago, and Queens University of Charlotte. She lives in Michigan with her husband and their three children.