KNOXVILLE, TN—Sundress Publications proudly announces the release of Donna Vorreyer’s book, A House of Many Windows. Vorreyer poems take their time. The well-crafted poetry in this book is rhythmically stunning, as each piece whether breathless or meandering, moves the reader along at a precise pace, unfolding feeling and circumstance with artisan-like skill. The focus is on the body as a world unto itself, and Vorreyer maps this body with clear curiousity, yearning and awe.
A House of Many Windows is concerned with fate, trial and circumstance, and confronting loss with courage and honesty. It is remarkably subtle how a sense of unease creeps into many of these poems, always emerging from behind a curtain – an ever-present sidekick readers thought they lost pages ago. Vorreyer’s subjects are insightful and fearless, whether they are eloquent in the throes of romantic love or muted by a bittersweet combination of sorrow and a prevailing enthusiasm for everyday beauty. The intimacy of the writing suits the subject of the body, so that readers truly feel submerged in water, or curled into a restless sleep. They are invited to access grief and desire on a carnal level. The speakers treat every day with ceremony, glorify all things natural, and contribute a sense that human beings are united by their flaws. These poems are humble yet expertly built, unafraid to be vulnerable, and constructed with refined, climactic intensity the like of which is impossible to resist.
Patricia Smith, author of Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, remarks on A House of Many Windows: “The poems that comprise this enviable collection are unflinching and fearless, crafting new definitions for the definition of woman—as mother, as lover, as flawed and singular being. Donna Vorreyer has written these revelatory verses from the caverns of her own body—her commitment to the breath of each stanza is formidable. And that’s why this book is unforgettable.”
Laura McCullough, founder and editor-in-chief of Mead, also finds beauty in Vorreyer’s poetry saying, “these brave, sometimes elegiac poems are about caring, about how one goes on even when the weight of intense feeling is crippling. Desire, loss, the humble and glorious body, the great subjects of what it means to be human are deftly exfoliated in these poems of disassemblage and re-creation.”
Donna Vorreyer is the author of four chapbooks: The Imagined Life of the Pioneer Wife (Redbird Chapbooks), Womb/Seed/Fruit (Finishing Line Press), Come Out, Virginia (Naked Mannekin Press), and Ordering the Hours (Maverick Duck Press). She is a poetry editor for Mixed Fruit, and her work has appeared in many journals, recently in Sweet, Linebreak, Rhino, Cider Press Review, Stirring, and Wicked Alice. Donna lives in the Chicago area where she teaches middle school and therefore often acts like she is twelve years old.
A House of Many Windows is now available for sale at sundresspublications.com.
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