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.
REVIEWS Publishers Weekly starred review | In NewPages |In The Hopkins Review
In Colorado Review | In A Women's Thing
PRAISE Arterian weaves a family narrative of devastating clarity from letters,
found text, memories, and more in her striking debut.
— Publishers Weekly, ★ review
Diana Arterian's poetry is shockingly almost-gentle as it speaks about
family violence and childhood terror.
— Sarah Vap
Playing Monster :: Seiche is a devastating classic. It’s like reading a detective
story or “thriller” but with real pain, real consequences.
— Alice Notley
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
ESSAYS & "A Dialog on First Books, in Two Parts" with Andrew Wessels at LARB
DIALOGS "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
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 Boog City | Eleven Eleven | Sink Review | Two Serious Ladies | The Volta
Yew Journal | Your Impossible Voice
(1913 Press, 2017)
PLAYING MONSTER :: SEICHE TRAILER
An Allegory
This manuscript circles around the life of Agrippina the Younger, known for murdering, seducing, and manipulating her way into the most powerful position possible for a woman at the time: Empress of the Roman Empire. The work involves historical poems as well as hybrid pieces regarding the speaker's attempts to learn more about Agrippina's life through travel and research. This manuscript was recently named a finalist for the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize.
EXCERPTS Black Warrior Review | BOMB | The Poetry Foundation PoetryNow | Salt Hill Journal | Action, Spectacle
(forthcoming)