CEASE

A book about peace

CEASE


AVAILABLE NOW from Amazon and IndieBound.

Click here to read selections from the book.

About the book


The poems in Beth Bachmann’s CEASE–not quite lyric, not quite prose–read more like urgently wired messages. Sometimes, her words splash forward like water from a pitcher. Sometimes, they erupt like fire from a drum. Beth Bachmann has written a scarily original, apocalyptic book about a time when it appears it is necessary to destroy and kill for peace. – Henri Cole

How are we to speak to each other in a time of war? In half-whispers? shouts? In their music–and even more so in their silences–these poems incredible power is in the knowledge they possess: the keen awareness that here, in America “we are guilty of what we haven’t done.” Bachmann has created here a necessary, inimitable, urgent music. – Ilya Kaminsky

“First comes peace then comes after…” It’s a sober utterance that hurls us into this monumental new collection, the pearl of calm on the storm’s tongue. The effect is astonishing. Bachmann manages to strike a perfect balance between crystalline clarity and centripetal verve, building poems that wild inside walls made of water, water made of motion, motion made of air. Bachmann has given us new territory, this major new event. – Kaveh Akbar

BOOK REVIEWS

Cease’s kinetic energy engages and challenges the reader. She deconstructs America while constructing a vision of unity. Bachmann’s poems rub up against each other, a protest charged in the late hot autumn air: tear down barriers that uphold old corruption and thrive. ” Stephen Scott Whitaker, The Broadkill Review

“Beth Bachmann’s third book of poems, CEASE, feels all too timely and relevant in the midst of the current situation on our nation’s southern border….Unsettled and unsettling, these poems challenge our very definition of poetry, as they construct and then deconstruct the walls of their own architecture.” Elizabeth Knapp, The Collagist

“This book of poems is for any survivor, and it’s an urgent reminder that you can’t have peace without a violent desire for it. The poems seem to sing in praise of the way pain can mold us into something terrifyingly strong.” Brandi Nicole Martin, The Southeast Review

Beth

 Beth Bachmann teaches in the MFA program at Vanderbilt University and splits her time between Nashville and NYC.

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Temper

Beth Bachmann’s first book,Temper (2009), won the AWP Donald Hall Poetry prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award

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News and Events

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Contact

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Get in touch with Beth!

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