Publisher's Synopsis
Poetry. Michelle Gottschlich's debut collection of poems bears an acute & tender hand toward the inscrutable nature of being. Engaged in the milieu of void sets (code elements that do not show in surface content) & employing interruption, (day)dream, & other fragmented mental activity as valid manifestations of voice, these poems evince & commune with the buried codes & elements of repressed & othered worlds. Embedded in a culture latent with cruelty & expectation, here are poems that make space for the beautiful aberrations found in the socially estranged realms of mental illness & gender nonconformity. VOID SETS emits a harrowing & necessary glow, one that extends across the enigmatic chasm between persons & reveals forgotten corners, untouched depths: The dream of mine / where you're endless water / and I'm a tiny diver.
This book reminded me what it is that I love, that I love, in poems: I love witnessing a real person talking, or trying to talk, to a real person (who might live inside oneself, yes, I know). I love the actual yearning and sorrow and prayer that the voice calling out is. I want you to hear this. I want to ask you this question. It's so goddamned beautiful and sad and true. Michelle Gottschlich's Void Sets is like a long and lovely and heartbroken call. It's an incredible book.--Ross Gay
'Void sets' are the pieces of computer code that are not content: they indicate the presence of images, or provide a blank space; they offer, say, an italic shift; they bold. Michelle Gottschlich is bold: a smart questioner and comforter who spends equal time here talking to individuals (we listen in) and talking to herself (we identify): she's talking to the reader like the reader has just finished saying something she urgently needs to respond to, in either direct or coded ways (there may be censors!) --Do you think adults made us cruel? she asks. It may be her directness that most distinguishes her, her refusal to avoid the difficult. Gottschlich wonders where a missed call went (and yes, that seems like a void set!) but she also has more patience for--and openness to--connection than the 'hundreds of machines that mediate [her] life' are designed to permit. She's listening, she's making content (out of discontent?) by exploring all the places contemporary culture likes to pretend there isn't any.--Sally Ball
