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. This manuscript was recently named a finalist for the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, and given Honorable Mention by Claudia Rankine for the AWP Donald Hall Prize.
EXCERPTS Action, Spectacle | Black Warrior Review | BOMB
The Poetry Foundation | PoetryNow | Salt Hill Journal