Publisher's Synopsis
Poetry. Women's Studies. Editors' Selection from the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. THEN WINTER traces one speaker's journey in a psychiatric treatment facility. Faced with the threat of a loss of voice, a silence that seeks to bury her, she turns often to the natural world beyond the facility's windows. The trees, the rain, the birds--these commonplace things become tethering forces of primal, hope-giving importance. As she forms bonds with her fellow patients, some of whom become her unlikely confidants and friends, she discovers the sustaining power of connection and hope.
On the surface, Chloe Honum's chapbook, THEN WINTER, is a powerfully quiet meditation on a speaker's experiences at a psychiatric ward. But the book is really about the power of nature, nature as 'conqueror' in all of its beauty--Honum's unromantic nature is the prism in which the speaker refracts her life, it's a way for the speaker to parse or re-angle pain. Honum's poems and voice are steely, unforgettable, and full of treasures. And her gifts are immensely palpable.--Victoria Chang
