Fieldglass

Sexual identity, female friendship, and queer experiences of love

Fraught with obsession, addiction, and unrequited love, Catherine Pond's Fieldglass immerses us in the speaker's transition from childhood to adulthood. A queer coming-of-age, this collection is a candid exploration of sexual identity, family dynamics, and friendships that elude easy categorization, offering insight on the ambiguous nature of identity.

Saturated by her surroundings and permeated by the emotional lives of those close to her, the speaker struggles with feelings of displacement, trauma, and separateness. She is perpetually in transit, with long drives, flights, and train rides--moving most often between the city and the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. As the collection unfolds, the speaker journeys toward adulthood, risking intimacy and attempting to undo her embedded impulses toward silence and absorption.

Reflective, graceful, and understated, Pond's images accumulate power through restraint and suggestion. Deeply personal and intense, searching and yearning, associative and lyric, Fieldglass is a confessional about growing up, loving hard, and letting go.


Author: Catherine Pond
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
Published: 03/19/2021
Pages: 90
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.35lbs
Size: 8.80h x 6.00w x 0.40d
ISBN13: 9780809338146
ISBN10: 0809338149
BISAC Categories:
- Poetry | American | General

About the Author

Catherine Pond is a cofounder, with Julia Anna Morrison, of the online literary magazine Two Peach. For four years, she was the assistant director of the New York State Summer Writers Institute. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, The Adroit Journal, Poetry Northwest, and Salmagundi, among others. Currently, she teaches writing at the University of Southern California.