Sinkhole: A Legacy of Suicide
Juliet Patterson
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world
Description
Finalist for the 2023 Minnesota Book AwardA sublimely elegant, fractured reckoning with the legacy and inheritance of suicide in one American family.In 2009, Juliet Patterson was recovering from a serious car accident when she learned her father had died by suicide. His death was part of a disturbing pattern in her family. Her father's father had taken his own life; so had her mother's. Over the weeks and months that followed, grieving and in physical pain, Patterson kept returning to one question: Why? Why had her family lost so many men, so many fathers, and what lay beneath the silence that had taken hold?In three graceful movements, Patterson explores these questions. In the winter of her father's death, she struggles to make sense of the loss--sifting through the few belongings he left behind, looking to signs and symbols for meaning. As the spring thaw comes, she and her mother depart Minnesota for her father's burial in her parents' hometown of Pittsburg, Kansas. A once-prosperous town of promise and of violence, against people and the land, Pittsburg is now literally undermined by abandoned claims and sinkholes. There, Patterson carefully gathers evidence and radically imagines the final days of the grandfathers--one a fiery pro-labor politician, the other a melancholy businessman--she never knew. And finally, she returns to her father: to the haunting subjects of goodbyes, of loss, and of how to break the cycle.A stunning elegy that vividly enacts Emily Dickinson's dictum to "tell it slant," Sinkhole richly layers personal, familial, political, and environmental histories to provide not answers but essential, heartbreaking truth.
Product Details
Price
$25.00
$23.25
Publisher
Milkweed Editions
Publish Date
September 13, 2022
Pages
272
Dimensions
5.43 X 8.58 X 1.1 inches | 1.01 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9781571311764
BISAC Categories:
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliate
About the Author
Juliet Patterson is the author of Sinkhole, as well as two collections of poems, Threnody and The Truant Lover, a finalist for the Lambda Award. Her poems and essays have appeared widely. She has received fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Minneapolis-based Institute for Community Cultural Development. Her other awards include the Arts & Letters Susan Atefat Prize in nonfiction and the Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize. She lives in Minneapolis.
Reviews
"Mixing autobiography, academic psychology, and an ecological history of Kansas, Patterson, a poet, examines the suicides in her family, beginning with her father's."--The New Yorker"A soulful odyssey . . . [Patterson's] bewilderment and edge-of-the-sinkhole grief is palpable . . . Though the memoir doesn't solve the riddle of suicide or offer a neat narrative arc, it does show the value of remembering and the importance of paying attention to, for example, a 'rack of suits and ties, ' . . . or a Lite Brite message left glowing in the dark after her father left for a business trip that said: 'Be good. I love you. See you soon.'"--Minneapolis Star Tribune"Patterson marvels at the pervasiveness of some of her family members', on both her paternal and maternal sides, dying by suicide . . . Tying together environmental, political, and historical facts in her family tree, the author imagines what it means to take one's life and shares what it's like to be the one left behind. As fascinating as it is upsetting, Patterson has intersected the past and future, imagining the silent crisis happening among the men in her family, as well as the persistent fear of her own potential demise through self-harm, all while considering genetics, societal pressures, and prescribed antidepressants. The end result is an elegantly tragic work of research, history, and creative nonfiction that seeks answers, closure, and ultimate peace."--Library Journal, starred review"A spare, sensitive evocation of Patterson's experience of grief, paired with an insightful work of family and regional history . . . The poet's sensibility is evident in these pages, as she excavates her own raw emotions alongside passages of clear-eyed journalism and creative nonfiction. Sinkhole is a painfully honest and sobering work that may provide insight and comfort to those facing a similar tragedy.'"--Shelf Awareness"After her father took his own life in 2009 at age 77, Patterson delved into her family's legacy of suicide--the result is a stirring look at how history, environment, and cultural pressures all played a role . . . Patterson's lyrical and discerning treatment of a global 'psychological crisis' will keep readers transfixed."--Publishers Weekly"A pensive memoir about mental illness, suicide, and the quest to uncover often hidden family secrets . . . Apart from the personal, [Patterson] weaves in results from her research in thanatology and suicide, including the provocative thought from psychologist Edwin Shneidman that 'the person who commits suicide puts his psychological skeleton in the survivor's emotional closet.' A searching, often elegant meditation on loneliness, pain, and redemption."--Kirkus Reviews
"Along with the environmental history braided throughout, Sinkhole offers a master class in how extensive research can add depth and breadth to personal writing."--The Washington Independent Review of Books
"Sinkhole is a literary triumph.
Juliet Patterson brings us to a brave, smart, and compassionate understanding
of suicide. Anyone who has lost someone to suicide knows the haunting that
follows. You are buried beneath an avalanche of questions that can never be
answered. But in Patterson's adept hands, we not only enter 'the
natural history of suicide, ' offering insights to an erosional state of mind,
we are taken into societal patterns that foster an atmosphere where suicide
becomes the end point of isolation and despair. The somber connections
Patterson makes between her father's death by suicide and the family legacy
that precedes his death, tied to a history of coal mining, exposes the fact
that our health and the health of the planet cannot be separated. The
violence we inflict on ourselves is a mirror of the violence we inflict on
land. Juliet Patterson is a soaring writer who has chosen to not look
away. We are the beneficiaries of her gaze. There is poetry in this
elegiac book, with an uncommon beauty and stillness radiating between each
sentence. Sinkhole resurrects our dead from the
sorrow and silences surrounding suicide and gives voice to the whys of
their voiceless acts."--Terry Tempest Williams, author of Erosion "In confronting her family's dark legacy of
suicide, Juliet Patterson does far more than plumb the depths of human
despair. Sinkhole is a master class in the way truth can pry
open the deepest cellar, how language can calm a raw, ragged soul. To read this
unflinching look at darkness is to find a way toward the light. After so much
darkness, so much light!"--Margaret Renkl, author of Late Migrations
"Juliet Patterson writes with a poet's precision and a poet's heart too about that most devastating moment, the loss of a parent. Devastating twice over by the terms and manner in which he died. Survivors are left to ask 'Why?' and normally one says there is no answer to this question. But Patterson keeps asking. In this text that has the feel of a police procedural but the emotional weight of a desperation to know, Patterson delves into familial and social history and brings us, the readers, along on a perilous journey. By the end we realize we each too might be--physically, socially, psychologically, spiritually, medically, environmentally--in the midst of life but on the lip of death. As a parent, a wife, a poet, a daughter, a human, Juliet Patterson makes the most courageous foray yet into answering that last unanswerable question: 'Why?'"--Kazim Ali, author of Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water"With deft fingers, Juliet Patterson digs below the surface of inherited illness, generational trauma, and societal notions of grief. Like its namesake, Sinkhole explores what lurks beneath seemingly stable ground. After the suicide of Patterson's father, she is driven to investigate his death. What's uncovered are multiple lifetimes of repressed emotion and internalized perceptions of failure. With two successive generations of patriarchs committing suicide Patterson reckons with what's a coincidence, and what's a pattern. In thoughtfully rendered passages she delves into creative nonfiction, imagining what those final hours were for her father and grandfather-- what thoughts were on their minds, or weren't. Sinkholes can be exacerbated by reckless natural resource mining, and Patterson ties a delicate net lulling the reader into a conversation between the two. If toxic lead levels can be discovered as a hidden byproduct of rampant capitalist practices-- what other concealed ailments can be tied to a lack of respect for nature? What feelings of failure can epigenetically alter seemingly placid inner worlds generations later? Gracefully and languidly, Patterson illuminates what typically is seen as a void, and asks the reader to ponder: how do our outer landscapes reflect our inner worlds?"-- Mathuson Anthony, Book Club Bookstore, New York, NY "When I started this lyrical exploration of suicide, inheritance, and place by lesbian poet Juliet Patterson, I had no idea that my home state would play such a central role. As it turns out, both of Patterson's parents grew up in the former mining town of Pittsburg, KS, now ravaged by sinkholes. In an obsessive unearthing of family history spurred by grief for her father, Patterson investigates the lives and suicides of three family members: her father, and each of her parents' fathers. As Patterson delicately processes her own experiences as a suicide survivor, she opens up a dialogue for readers--we can talk about suicide, and we should talk about suicide. Sinkhole is a beautiful, fascinating read."--Mary Wahlmeier, Raven Book Store Lawrence, KS "The author takes us on her journey to learn the unknowable, to understand what is not understandable, in an effort to break the patterns of the past - escape a metaphorical sinkhole. Along the way you'll learn about the history of a region and the violence wreaked against its people and environment that persists today - literal sinkholes."-- Alana Haley, Schuler Books, Grand Rapids, MI "Great storytelling; Patterson has a soothing and inviting voice even while discussing the hardest parts of her father's suicide. A lovely blend of family history and grief."-- Lauren Nopenz Fairley, Curious Iguana, Frederick, MD "I had to wait to read to read this book, because in the last two years there has been so much loss both personally and collectively. I love Juliet's straight forward writing and research; I think it's something that we all want to be able to do. We're all on a journey and Juliet's book has helped me breath once more."-- Jayne Rowsam, Mystery to Me, Madison, WI Praise for Juliet
Patterson "Juliet Patterson's poems are entirely
themselves; they use time and the eye and tongue--all the body, as thought and
insight, inside and outside history."--Jean Valentine "Patterson's work is rich with compression,
power, and a precision I'd like to steal for myself."--Joni Tevis, Orion "Spare, pastoral, intimate, and probing, [Patterson's]
musically exacting poems offer arresting insights. . . . They question, invent,
refer, divert, take flying risks. They are fluid, considered, dignified. They
celebrate the human eye, mind, and tongue."--Olga Broumas "Thrilling . . . [Patterson's] poetic realm
has been that of the precise image . . . placed in short and striking lines.
Through these images, she has revealed the path of the mind, often playfully."--DIAGRAM "[Patterson's] poems are driven by a voice
that I think would define the world clearly and unequivocally if it were
possible. Instead, the poet is forced (like most of us) to offer up images, the
correspondences that connect them, and the humanity behind what life leaves for
us. . . . Creating a world where there are no easy answers, Patterson asks
for active reading."--Painted Bride Quarterly "In Patterson's vision, nature rarely gives
without taking some small token in return. . . . She laments the looming
destruction of nature even as that destruction portends the creation of
something new."--Publishers Weekly "Direct and tough, lush and erect . . .
[Patterson] will bring you tears, bend your branch, twist your mind."--Twin
Cities Daily Planet "There is a kind of communion . . . between
what is said and what is not said, that reminds the reader of walking through
the very December fields that Patterson describes, noting the dry, brittle
landscape and yet--and also--the spry and determined life that persists within
it. . . . [Patterson's] quiet poems . . . are more like finely chiseled ice
sculptures than gleaming, luxurious gems. But the truth they express is no less
radiant--in fact, it may be even more so, borne as it is out of a season of less
rather than plenty."--Shannon Gibney "Patterson's ear is at once impeccable and
exciting. . . . We understand the poet's vision and language as a form of
querying, a kind of existential question conditioned by existence's constant
opposite, nonexistence."--Ryo Yamaguchi
"Along with the environmental history braided throughout, Sinkhole offers a master class in how extensive research can add depth and breadth to personal writing."--The Washington Independent Review of Books
"Sinkhole is a literary triumph.
Juliet Patterson brings us to a brave, smart, and compassionate understanding
of suicide. Anyone who has lost someone to suicide knows the haunting that
follows. You are buried beneath an avalanche of questions that can never be
answered. But in Patterson's adept hands, we not only enter 'the
natural history of suicide, ' offering insights to an erosional state of mind,
we are taken into societal patterns that foster an atmosphere where suicide
becomes the end point of isolation and despair. The somber connections
Patterson makes between her father's death by suicide and the family legacy
that precedes his death, tied to a history of coal mining, exposes the fact
that our health and the health of the planet cannot be separated. The
violence we inflict on ourselves is a mirror of the violence we inflict on
land. Juliet Patterson is a soaring writer who has chosen to not look
away. We are the beneficiaries of her gaze. There is poetry in this
elegiac book, with an uncommon beauty and stillness radiating between each
sentence. Sinkhole resurrects our dead from the
sorrow and silences surrounding suicide and gives voice to the whys of
their voiceless acts."--Terry Tempest Williams, author of Erosion "In confronting her family's dark legacy of
suicide, Juliet Patterson does far more than plumb the depths of human
despair. Sinkhole is a master class in the way truth can pry
open the deepest cellar, how language can calm a raw, ragged soul. To read this
unflinching look at darkness is to find a way toward the light. After so much
darkness, so much light!"--Margaret Renkl, author of Late Migrations
"Juliet Patterson writes with a poet's precision and a poet's heart too about that most devastating moment, the loss of a parent. Devastating twice over by the terms and manner in which he died. Survivors are left to ask 'Why?' and normally one says there is no answer to this question. But Patterson keeps asking. In this text that has the feel of a police procedural but the emotional weight of a desperation to know, Patterson delves into familial and social history and brings us, the readers, along on a perilous journey. By the end we realize we each too might be--physically, socially, psychologically, spiritually, medically, environmentally--in the midst of life but on the lip of death. As a parent, a wife, a poet, a daughter, a human, Juliet Patterson makes the most courageous foray yet into answering that last unanswerable question: 'Why?'"--Kazim Ali, author of Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water"With deft fingers, Juliet Patterson digs below the surface of inherited illness, generational trauma, and societal notions of grief. Like its namesake, Sinkhole explores what lurks beneath seemingly stable ground. After the suicide of Patterson's father, she is driven to investigate his death. What's uncovered are multiple lifetimes of repressed emotion and internalized perceptions of failure. With two successive generations of patriarchs committing suicide Patterson reckons with what's a coincidence, and what's a pattern. In thoughtfully rendered passages she delves into creative nonfiction, imagining what those final hours were for her father and grandfather-- what thoughts were on their minds, or weren't. Sinkholes can be exacerbated by reckless natural resource mining, and Patterson ties a delicate net lulling the reader into a conversation between the two. If toxic lead levels can be discovered as a hidden byproduct of rampant capitalist practices-- what other concealed ailments can be tied to a lack of respect for nature? What feelings of failure can epigenetically alter seemingly placid inner worlds generations later? Gracefully and languidly, Patterson illuminates what typically is seen as a void, and asks the reader to ponder: how do our outer landscapes reflect our inner worlds?"-- Mathuson Anthony, Book Club Bookstore, New York, NY "When I started this lyrical exploration of suicide, inheritance, and place by lesbian poet Juliet Patterson, I had no idea that my home state would play such a central role. As it turns out, both of Patterson's parents grew up in the former mining town of Pittsburg, KS, now ravaged by sinkholes. In an obsessive unearthing of family history spurred by grief for her father, Patterson investigates the lives and suicides of three family members: her father, and each of her parents' fathers. As Patterson delicately processes her own experiences as a suicide survivor, she opens up a dialogue for readers--we can talk about suicide, and we should talk about suicide. Sinkhole is a beautiful, fascinating read."--Mary Wahlmeier, Raven Book Store Lawrence, KS "The author takes us on her journey to learn the unknowable, to understand what is not understandable, in an effort to break the patterns of the past - escape a metaphorical sinkhole. Along the way you'll learn about the history of a region and the violence wreaked against its people and environment that persists today - literal sinkholes."-- Alana Haley, Schuler Books, Grand Rapids, MI "Great storytelling; Patterson has a soothing and inviting voice even while discussing the hardest parts of her father's suicide. A lovely blend of family history and grief."-- Lauren Nopenz Fairley, Curious Iguana, Frederick, MD "I had to wait to read to read this book, because in the last two years there has been so much loss both personally and collectively. I love Juliet's straight forward writing and research; I think it's something that we all want to be able to do. We're all on a journey and Juliet's book has helped me breath once more."-- Jayne Rowsam, Mystery to Me, Madison, WI Praise for Juliet
Patterson "Juliet Patterson's poems are entirely
themselves; they use time and the eye and tongue--all the body, as thought and
insight, inside and outside history."--Jean Valentine "Patterson's work is rich with compression,
power, and a precision I'd like to steal for myself."--Joni Tevis, Orion "Spare, pastoral, intimate, and probing, [Patterson's]
musically exacting poems offer arresting insights. . . . They question, invent,
refer, divert, take flying risks. They are fluid, considered, dignified. They
celebrate the human eye, mind, and tongue."--Olga Broumas "Thrilling . . . [Patterson's] poetic realm
has been that of the precise image . . . placed in short and striking lines.
Through these images, she has revealed the path of the mind, often playfully."--DIAGRAM "[Patterson's] poems are driven by a voice
that I think would define the world clearly and unequivocally if it were
possible. Instead, the poet is forced (like most of us) to offer up images, the
correspondences that connect them, and the humanity behind what life leaves for
us. . . . Creating a world where there are no easy answers, Patterson asks
for active reading."--Painted Bride Quarterly "In Patterson's vision, nature rarely gives
without taking some small token in return. . . . She laments the looming
destruction of nature even as that destruction portends the creation of
something new."--Publishers Weekly "Direct and tough, lush and erect . . .
[Patterson] will bring you tears, bend your branch, twist your mind."--Twin
Cities Daily Planet "There is a kind of communion . . . between
what is said and what is not said, that reminds the reader of walking through
the very December fields that Patterson describes, noting the dry, brittle
landscape and yet--and also--the spry and determined life that persists within
it. . . . [Patterson's] quiet poems . . . are more like finely chiseled ice
sculptures than gleaming, luxurious gems. But the truth they express is no less
radiant--in fact, it may be even more so, borne as it is out of a season of less
rather than plenty."--Shannon Gibney "Patterson's ear is at once impeccable and
exciting. . . . We understand the poet's vision and language as a form of
querying, a kind of existential question conditioned by existence's constant
opposite, nonexistence."--Ryo Yamaguchi
