About the Book
Where Are the Snows takes its title from the famous refrain of FranÇois Villon’s 15th Century poem “Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past.” Like that poem, the book functions, among other things, as an ubi sunt, Latin for “Where are they?” as in “Where are the ones who came before us?”—the beautiful, the strong, the virtuous, all of them? In keeping with that long tradition, these poems offer a way to think about life’s transience—its beauty, its absurdity, and of course its mortality. Allusive and associative, anti-capitalist and unapologetically political, aligned somewhere between comedy and anger, this poetry juxtaposes the triumphs and tragedies (mostly tragedies) of our current age with those of history, and—by wondering “Where are they?”—explores the questions of where we are now and where we might be going.
Table of Contents:
Dress Up
To Replicate the Sacrifice of Christ’s Journey into the Desert for 40 Days
Every Now and Then
The Production and Consumption of Goods and Services
Pastoral
Pedestrian Access
Epistolary
The Life of the Mind
Hump Day Has Always Been a Terrible Nickname
How to Act
Humanistic Geography
The Special Organ of Breathing and Smelling
The Ten of Pentacles
A Quiet State After Some Period of Disturbance
A Talisman Attracts, An Amulet Repels
The Moon is the Moon Whether We Call It That Or Not
The Word by Which a Person or Thing Is Denoted
A Human Female Who Has Given Birth to a Baby
To Cherish a Desire with Anticipation
A Power or Ability of the Kind Possessed by Superheroes
Exalted or Worthy of Complete Devotion
I’m Always Up for an Arbitrary Challenge
A Court Game Played with Long-Handled Rackets
Atmospheric Water Vapor Frozen into Ice Crystals
Ekphrastic
Foretelling the Future by a Randomly Chosen Passage in a Book
The State or Period of Being a Child
A Building That Serves as Living Quarters
To Celebrate the Anniversary of Someone’s Birth
The Physical Universe Beyond the Earth’s Atmosphere
The Point in Time or Space at Which Something Originates
The Surroundings in Which an Animal or Plant Lives or Operates
The Act of Passing Across or Through
The Sweet and Fleshy Product of a Tree or Other Plant
A Place Set Aside for Burial of the Dead
One Authorized to Perform the Sacred Rites
A Source of Inspiration, A Guiding Genius
Ubi Sunt
The Natural Agent that Stimulates Sight and Makes Things Visible
With the Face to the Rear, in the Direction Behind
About the Author :
KATHLEEN ROONEY is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, as well as a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a collective of poets and their typewriters who compose poetry on demand. Her most recent books include the novels Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, and her criticism appears in The New York Times, The Chicago Review of Books, The Brooklyn Rail, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay, and teaches at DePaul.
Review :
"Reading Kathleen Rooney's Where Are the Snows is much like walking into an echo chamber from which you emerge enlightened, amused and shaken."
--Max Winter in Star Tribune--Max Winter "Star Tribuine" (8/26/2022 12:00:00 AM)
"Where Are the Snows is darkly funny and tenderly beautiful and often downright haunting, both a marker of this fraught time in national and world history and a bit of timeless art."
--Caitlin Archer-Helke in Third Coast Review--Caitlin Archer-Helke "Third Coast Review" (8/19/2022 12:00:00 AM)
"humorous and playful"
--Rachel Robbins in Rain Taxi
--Rachel Robbins "Rain Taxi"
"In Where Are the Snows, Kathleen Rooney asks, 'Who will write the moral history of my generation?' While she doesn't pretend to be that person, she does, in the thirty-nine poems that make up this collection, address the kinds of issues--faith and religion, hope and desolation, societal normalities and abnormalities--that would most certainly be part of such a chronicle."
--Patrick Parks in Southeast Review--Patrick Parks "Southeast Review"
"Kathleen Rooney's collection of 'whatchamacallits' is a true delight to read, funny, expressive, rhythmic, informative, opinionated, erudite and subtle."
--Charles Rammelkamp in The Lake--Charles Rammelkamp "The Lake" (11/1/2022 12:00:00 AM)
"Overall, it may well be magical. Or then again, perhaps this is just a poet who knows what she's about"
--John Domini in The Brooklyn Rail--John Domini "Brooklyn Rail" (9/1/2022 12:00:00 AM)
"Rooney has written an immersive book of poems that observe motherhood, love, capitalism, and more."
--José Olivarez in Chicago Mag--José Olivarez "Chicago Mag" (8/30/2022 12:00:00 AM)
"With the mention of 'featureless time, ' [Rooney] hints at how the poems that follow will weave back and forth across centuries, calling up images of classical paintings and referencing a timeline of abiding luminaries that includes everyone from Lucretius to The Beatles to Satan himself. As she tours us through the ages, Rooney seems to take on the role of a Dickensian Christmas ghost, pointing a knowing finger at the pains of the past--the greed, the disregard, the inequalities, the plagues--and calling attention to how those issues still remain."
--Carrie Muehle in TriQuarterly--Carrie Muehle "TriQuarterly" (9/7/2022 12:00:00 AM)
"Written in the midst of the pandemic and Trump, Where Are the Snows is exorcism as lyrical standup."
--Robert Puccinelli in LitHub
--Robert Puccinelli "LitHub" (10/12/2022 12:00:00 AM)
"Where Are the Snows is somehow desperately tender and wickedly incisive at the same time. Kathleen Rooney manages a smart, fierce, and intelligent take on contemporary life that everyone should read. It is a generous book that invites a reader in, and generative in the way that good poetry always is. Read a couple of pages of this book and you need to put it down and go make something, whether a poem or a sculpture or a major life decision, as you prefer. Any of the three would be in the spirit of this wild and wonderful work."
--Kazim Ali, author of The Voice of Sheila Chandra
"Kathleen Rooney's Where Are the Snows is a book of investigative improvisation--interested in the loss and whereabouts of everyday goodness, the futility of contemporary politics and capitalism, the transience of joy and sorrow. Her supercharged lyrics pulse with interruption, iteration, and inference. They juxtapose absurd facts and self-deprecating queries with the timing of a standup comedian. Half heartbreaking, half hilarious, this book is 100% punk rock."
--Marcus Wicker, author of Silencer
"In Kathleen Rooney's Where Are the Snows, profound and hilarious stanzas underpin a philosophy for living in an era that feels post-claiming-to-be-post-anything. The book is both a modern pastoral with startled, awestruck observations about everything from the economy to Wednesdays and a deeply emotional elegy for a complicated, yet beloved, spirituality. Rooney's adroit use of language reveals how nostalgia and history are their own kinds of mysticism and--my favorite--that time itself is just a metaphysical joke. I mean, c'mon, her dedication reads: To the future. Rooney is at her funniest in this book, and in all the best ways: subversive, nerdy, and tragic. You won't believe how saintly I've become. She writes. Big halo energy. This is a great book."
--Sommer Browning, author of Good Actors
