Erinn Batykefer

Now available from Red Hen Press!

Allegheny, Monongahela is the debut collection from Erinn Batykefer, winner of the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award.

Using the confluence of rivers in Pittsburgh as a metaphorical lens, Allegheny, Monongahela probes the ruinous misalignment between the external and internal lives of two sisters and their childhood in Western Pennsylvania. Their complex and difficult relationship is the spine of the collection, told obliquely through a series of sonnets and ekphrastic meditations on the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe: the ways in which they separately navigate a violent family history that reverberates through their present and futures; their polarized impulses toward creativity and self-destruction. Rooted in a mutable, watery landscape that is not consistently recognizable, Allegheny, Monongahela investigates the collisions between the world and the self, the fissured identities that result, and the ways in which art may heal or fail to heal the cracks.

Excerpts:

"The Good Girl," Gulf Coast

"Before You Wake," Subtropics

"Pittsburgh as Self-Portrait I," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Buy it on Amazon or at Red Hen Press!

Praise for Allegheny, Monongahela:
Close to the bone, Erinn Batykefer's poems--sharp-edged as O'Keeffe's paintings, skeletons visible and harrowing--are harsh and devastating torrents of rage, love, and misdirected desire. These poems tangle with a grandfather's murder, a family's violence, love indulged or denied, scouring to bedrock any easy assumptions. Her poems are floodwaters, her poems are the river's skin after rain. Necessary and vibrant, they help us savor our flawed and damaged world. Here is an important new voice in American poetry.
--Peggy Shumaker, author of Just Breathe Normally and Blaze

Lyrically resonate and painterly in their attention to form, the poems in Erinn Batykefer's debut collection Allegheny, Monongahela explore such disparate subjects as family history, violence, art, coming of age, science, and the natural world. Like the rivers beautifully paired in the title, the undercurrent coursing through these poems is place--the muddied, doglegged landscape of western Pennsylvania. "I am an unreadable map...each curve hairpinning the high ground blind," Batykefer writes. Hers is a language at once torrential yet controlled, dark yet luminous, "a blush of blood left in the napkin after dinner's cleared." Allegheny, Monongahela is a haunting, sinuous debut from a young writer with an ear for "fire, and the coming ash."
--Quan Barry, author of Asylum and Controvertibles

All wounds and precise cutting, Erinn Batykefer's first collection is a series of invocations to memory--of the divided self in the body of another, the blood residue after loss. We read to know the triumph of these brilliant and life-saving poems on the page. The marks they leave are indelible. I love this collection and believe the poet has a luminous future.
--Hilda Raz, author of All Odd and Splendid, and Divine Honors

	Now available from Red Hen Press! Allegheny, Monongahela is the debut collection from Erinn Batykefer, winner of the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award. Using the confluence of rivers in Pittsburgh as a metaphorical lens, Allegheny, Monongahela probes the ruinous misalignment between the external and internal lives of two sisters and their childhood in Western Pennsylvania. Their complex and difficult relationship is the spine of the collection, told obliquely through a series of sonnets and ekphrastic meditations on the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe: the ways in which they separately navigate a violent family history that reverberates through their present and futures; their polarized impulses toward creativity and self-destruction. Rooted in a mutable, watery landscape that is not consistently recognizable, Allegheny, Monongahela investigates the collisions between the world and the self, the fissured identities that result, and the ways in which art may heal or fail to heal the cracks. Excerpts: "The Good Girl," Gulf Coast "Before You Wake," Subtropics "Pittsburgh as Self-Portrait I," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Buy it on Amazon or at Red Hen Press! Praise for Allegheny, Monongahela: Close to the bone, Erinn Batykefer's poems--sharp-edged as O'Keeffe's paintings, skeletons visible and harrowing--are harsh and devastating torrents of rage, love, and misdirected desire. These poems tangle with a grandfather's murder, a family's violence, love indulged or denied, scouring to bedrock any easy assumptions. Her poems are floodwaters, her poems are the river's skin after rain. Necessary and vibrant, they help us savor our flawed and damaged world. Here is an important new voice in American poetry. --Peggy Shumaker, author of Just Breathe Normally and Blaze Lyrically resonate and painterly in their attention to form, the poems in Erinn Batykefer's debut collection Allegheny, Monongahela explore such disparate subjects as family history, violence, art, coming of age, science, and the natural world. Like the rivers beautifully paired in the title, the undercurrent coursing through these poems is place--the muddied, doglegged landscape of western Pennsylvania. "I am an unreadable map...each curve hairpinning the high ground blind," Batykefer writes. Hers is a language at once torrential yet controlled, dark yet luminous, "a blush of blood left in the napkin after dinner's cleared." Allegheny, Monongahela is a haunting, sinuous debut from a young writer with an ear for "fire, and the coming ash." --Quan Barry, author of Asylum and Controvertibles All wounds and precise cutting, Erinn Batykefer's first collection is a series of invocations to memory--of the divided self in the body of another, the blood residue after loss. We read to know the triumph of these brilliant and life-saving poems on the page. The marks they leave are indelible. I love this collection and believe the poet has a luminous future. --Hilda Raz, author of All Odd and Splendid, and Divine Honors