Elisa Gabbert

A collection of funny and thought-provoking poems inspired by surprising facts that will appeal to poetry lovers and poetry haters alike from the author of the acclaimed essay collection The Unreality of Memory, “a work of sheer brilliance, beauty and bravery” (Andrew Sean Greer) Elisa Gabbert, a writer known to be both “casually brilliant” (Sandra Newman) and a “ruthless self-examiner” (Sarah Manguso) brings her “questing, restless intelligence” (Kirkus Reviews) to a new collection of poetry. By turns funny and chilling, these poems collect strange facts, interrogate language, and ask unanswerable questions that offer the pleasure of discovery on nearly every page: How does one suffer “gladly,” exactly? How bored are dogs? Which is more frightening, nothing or empty space? Was Wittgenstein sexy? With her sharp observations building to extremely quotable one-liners, the poems in this collection have an ear-wormy quality to them that’s both ultra contemporary and offers a reading experience that is at once essayistic, aphoristic, and philosophical—an invitation to eavesdrop on a mind paying attention to itself. Normal Distance is a book about thinking and feeling, meaning and experience, trees and the weather, and the boredom and pain of living through time.

Contagiously curious essays on reading, art, and the life of the mind, from the acclaimed author of The Unreality of Memory. Who are we when we read? When we journal? Are we more ourselves alone or with friends? Right now or in memory? How does time transform us and the art we love? In sixteen dazzling, expansive essays, the acclaimed essayist and poet Elisa Gabbert explores a life lived alongside books of all dog-eared and destroyed, cherished and discarded, classic and clichėd, familiar and profoundly new. She turns her witty, searching mind to the writers she admires, from Plath to Proust, and the themes that bind them―chance, freedom, envy, ambition, nostalgia, and happiness. She takes us to the strange edges of art and culture, from hair metal to surf movies to party fiction. Any Person Is the Only Self is a love letter to literature and to life, inviting us to think alongside one of our most thrilling and versatile critics.