1913 Press |
2017
Playing Monster :: Seiche was the Editors’ Selection for the 1913 Press Prize for First Books in 2016. This is a book-length poem weaving many threads, but predominantly childhood experiences with an abusive father and, as an adult, increasingly aggressive acts made toward the speaker’s mother by strange men. Playing Monster :: Seiche is a piece of noir poetics. It is memoir. It is documentary.
Praise
- Arterian weaves a family narrative of devastating clarity from letters, found text, memories, and more in her striking debut. — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
- Playing Monster :: Seiche is a devastating classic. It’s like reading a detective story or “thriller” but with real pain, real consequences. — Alice Notley
- At once ambitious and restrained, Playing Monster :: Seiche demonstrates not only Arterian’s lyrical range and knack for producing work with a certain epic energy, but also her ability to pair delicate content…with a form expressive of its deeper energetic truth.
— Allie Rowbottom - Diana Arterian’s poetry is shockingly almost-gentle as it speaks about family violence and childhood terror.
— Sarah Vap - Tender and cruel, the pathos in here animates me and the writing hunts me. And so I gratefully surrender.
— Lily Hoang - By looking terror right in the face and saying what she sees, [Arterian] puts it under her power. This achievement, what she does here—it makes other writing seem like child’s play. — Allison Cobb
Et cetera
Essays & Dialogues
- “Marginalia: Emerging Poet Diana Arterian on Playing Monster :: Seiche” at KMUW
- Conversation with Douglas Manuel at Poetry.LA
- “A Dialog on First Books, in Two Parts” with Andrew Wessels at Los Angeles Review of Books
- “Poetry Can Handle This: Poetics of Radical Exposure” with Natalie Eilbert at LitHub
- “The Work, the Edit, The Water: Coming to Terms With Editing Out” at The Poetry Foundation
- “You Can’t Yell at a Hurricane: On Narrative, Power, and Restorative Justice” at The Poetry Foundation
Reviews
- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
- NewPages by Katy Haas
- The Hopkins Review by Marlo Starr
- The Colorado Review by Claire Cronin
- A Women’s Thing by Allie Rowbottom
Etc.
- The Poetry Foundation’s 2017 Staff Picks
- SPD Recommends List (December)
- SPD Bestseller List (December, February)
- 20 Questions with rob mclennan
- “A Force of Nature: Diana Arterian’s Playing Monster :: Seiche” at The Poetry Foundation
Poems