Self-Imposed Exile

Description

Gwen Frost's powerful second poetry collection portrays the exile of otherness in a fractured world.

“If you are reading this, say aloud / what you most fear,” Gwen Frost instructs in the opening poem from her second collection; a bit later she begins the middle section with the admonition “If you are reading this / you are not ready. / You are too early— / it has already passed.” Through the progression of her poetry she deliberately challenges and unsettles her readers, preparing them for the question posed at the start of her final section, “Do you become the stories / you are told about yourself?” In response, she suggests that “The paradox of happiness / is that you are the story / and the writer. / Self-imposed exile / is leaving / and telling yourself, / you had to.” Frost accepts such exile as the cost of embracing her otherness, from which perspective she observes our fractured world and forces us to do so with her: “are we not all a culture that teaches us to abuse power?” These are jarringly honest and vulnerable poems, and in sharing them Frost offers the comfort of recognition to her fellow exiles. “There is one chance to say everything I have ever wanted to,” she writes, “and I need to finish the book.” Frost has finished this book, but readers must hope that a poetic voice as powerful and original as hers will return with far more to say.

Poetry. Family & Relationships. LGBTQ+ Studies. Women's Studies.

“'Do you write yourself free?' Gwen Frost asks in her remarkable second collection, SELF-IMPOSED EXILE. And by the end of the book, the answer, I believe, is yes—or as close as you can get. These poems meditate on the prison of the 'diseased brain' in an effort to heal and 'deter loneliness.' Frost’s speaker 'knock[s] on the mirror and the person inside turns away,' and later concludes, '[s]elf-imposed exile / is leaving/ and telling yourself, / you had to.' This complex web of severance unites these poems, offering a compelling portrait of a human being urgently reaching toward language and self-compassion. Highly recommended.”
—Allison Benis White, author of Self-Portrait with Crayon & The Wendys

“'The world is littered,' writes Gwen Frost, 'with the absurd: ruthlessness, ecstasy, tenderness.' With furious intensity, Frost sounds the depths of ruthless ecstasy, tender absurdity. In a state of exile simultaneously from and to the self, Frost’s poems 'hold up a mirror shaped like an exit wound.' This book is a pilgrimage through extremities of hurt and of healing (both the poet’s and our own): 'something about a scar, something about a hymn.'”
—Bruce Beasley, author of Prayershreds & All Soul Parts Returned

“Gwen Frost’s second collection, SELF-IMPOSED EXILE, is a book that burrows into the softest layers of self, one knife-wielding myth at a time. Frost’s voice is bold and miraculous: 'the wound is both a lobotomy / and a kiss on the temple' and 'I will light a forest on fire.' Surreal, mystical, and grotesquely visceral, each poem asks: what do you believe in? What will you write in order to know? Frost’s 'linguistic phlegm' will awaken you, to see inside yourself: 'I am crawling / across my own/palm.'”
—Jane Wong, author of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City & How to Not Be Afraid of Everything

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