The Tulip-Flame

Chloe Honum, Assistant Professor of English

Finalist for the PEN USA Literary Award

Winner of Foreword Review's 2014 Book of the Year Award

Winner of the Eric Hoffer Book Award in Poetry

Winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Best First Book of Poetry Award

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"Graceful and quiet, Honum’s stunning debut moves like a ballet dancer: light and deliberate, even when in pain. Here, pain takes center stage, laid bare in the opening poem: “Mother tried to take her life.” … Despite the long shadow death casts, the book bursts with new growth, where “Out of the light’s loose skin/ trumpet-flowers formed.” To Honum, perhaps nature’s presence is evidence enough that we haven’t been left alone: “Tonight, it crosses my mind/ how gone you are, and stars,/ if stars say anything, say Otherwise.” — Publisher's Weekly, starred review.

"No phrase is wasted, no emotion unexplored." — The Weekly Standard

"The book promises the values Elizabeth Bishop exalted in poetry: accuracy, spontaneity, and mystery...The Tulip-Flame represents an exciting moment for contemporary poetry." — Los Angeles Review of Books

"[Honum's] emotional register is as powerful and lithe as a leaping dancer." — Huffington Post