Normal Distance

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 essay collection The Unreality of Memory, “a work of sheer brilliance, beauty, and bravery” (Andrew Sean Greer)

Known to be both “casually brilliant” (Sandra Newman) and a “ruthless self-examiner” (Sarah Manguso), acclaimed writer Elisa Gabbert 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?
 
The poems in this collection are earwormy, ultracontemporary, essayistic, aphoristic, and philosophical—invitations 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.

ELISA GABBERT, a poet, critic, and essayist, is the author most recently of The Unreality of Memory: And Other Essays and The Word Pretty. She writes a regular poetry column for The New York Times, and her work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The New York Review of Books, A Public Space, and elsewhere. Her next collection of essays, Any Person Is the Only Self, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.