Sweet Gothic

by Colette Tennant

Publisher:

Resource Publications

, 2023

The poems in Sweet Gothic weave together themes of adoption, motherhood, yearning, family, and teaching in an intricate pattern that might leave one quivering, as one reviewer attests. As the title Sweet Gothic infers, the book is filled with binaries: light and dark, life and death, lost and found, known and unknown, music and silence.

The poem "In Between" suggests we all live somewhere in the middle. This poetry collection negotiates that middle ground. Like her necklace-making ancestor celebrated in the last poem of the book, Tennant strings together these images and narratives in a way that celebrates the power of art and helps us find our place in the midst of the contradictions around us.

Praise for Sweet Gothic

“Sweet Gothic is an exquisite chiaroscuro of grief and grace, loss and integration. As harmony completes a melody through notes that can never reach, this collection invites us into the contradictions of connection and absence. We reckon with what is unsolved and unhealed. We reach deep into our open spaces.”

—Sage Cohen, author of Writing the Life Poetic



“In Sweet Gothic, exquisite details echo from poem to poem, creating a world of generations: a birth mother lost but always called to, a storied sister never met, and students with their quirks of innocence. By turns audacious, funny, elegant, and heartbreaking, these poems search the borders between a family born to and one given, between past and present, but always rooted deeply in Appalachia. An American symphony of a book, Sweet Gothic shows poet Colette Tennant at the height of her powers.”

—Amy Miller, author of Astronauts



“In Sweet Gothic, Colette Tennant gives us a rich, deeply imagined primer to study, to savor. A number of these poems are about her students, and who wouldn’t want to be her student, listening as this collection teaches ‘metaphors for hunger,’ and ‘synonyms for want’? Full of startling leaps, intriguing allusions, and resonant tropes, these poems offer nothing less than the marvels of both wonderment and wondering.”

—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate emerita

Product Details

• Title: Sweet Gothic
• Author: Colette Tennant
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Print Publication Date: 2023
• Logos Release Date: 2023
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9798385200818, 9798385200795, 9798385200801
• Resource ID: LLS:9798385200818
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2023-12-05T22:09:22Z

About Colette Tennant

Colette Tennant received her PhD in English from Ohio State University. She is the author of Reading the Gothic in Margaret Atwood's First Seven Novels and the poetry books Commotion of Wings and Eden and After. She is an English professor at Corban University, where she teaches literature and creative writing.