Description

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“‘The feminists lied,’ she tells me. ‘They said we could do everything / we wanted.’ ‘Anything,’ I correct her.” A book-length narrative in poems, The Familiar explores female mid-life existential crisis through two characters: the Ordinary Self and the Extraordinary Self. A true homebody, satisfied with routine and the comforts of domesticity, the Ordinary Self wakes one day to find that while she’s been sleeping—for months? for years?— the Extraordinary Self has wreaked havoc in a blind, desperate attempt to accomplish something—anything—truly great. As the Ordinary Self works to reestablish harmony and order within the household, the Extraordinary Self must come to terms with her failure to meet both the ambitions of her youth and the standards that society has set for her as a mother, as a colleague, and as a spouse. Fabulist and absurdist, The Familiar features a mix of high and low language, philosophy, and pop culture while exploring the effects of second and third-wave feminism. It’s a book for anyone who’s vacillated between dreams, desires, and ambition on the one hand, and on the other a deeply ingrained need for stability and calm. It’s a book for anyone who may be approaching or going through mid-life and thinking, “Oh no. What have I done?” 

About the Author

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SARAH KAIN GUTOWSKI is the author of two books, The Familiar and Fabulous Beast: Poems, winner of the 14th annual National Indies Excellence Award for Poetry. With interdisciplinary artist Meredith Starr, she is co-creator of the project Every Second Feels Like Theft, a conversation in cyanotypes and poetry. Her poems have appeared in various print and online journals, including The Gettysburg Review, The Threepenny Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and The Southern Review. Her criticism has been published by Colorado Review, Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, and New York Journal of Books. 

Praise For…

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“Gutowski’s poems are breathtakingly smart—controlled, precise and exquisite as diamonds—and yet they vibrate dangerously from within, as if anticipating, as she writes in one poem, ‘so much broken glass.’”
—Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You
 

“How well I know these forms of self-splitting, of self-reproach, of taking an endless self-inventory that only ever leads to recrimination and concern. I always think that I’m the only one who plays both parts in my head as I wonder why I’m not better, smarter, kinder, humbler, more generous—or simply put—why it feels like I’m never enough. I know I’m not the only one who will be grateful for Sarah Kain Gutowski’s The Familiar. I know I’m not the only one who will feel less alone after reading these poems. I wish I could learn the lessons of wholeness this collection points the way towards, though I know I won’t. But then again, I just might.”
—Jason Schneiderman, author of Hold Me Tight
 

“Sarah Kain Gutowski’s richly-detailed The Familiar is divided into selves: the ordinary and extraordinary. With ruthless scrutiny, Gutowski makes the reader aware of the enormous, invisible labor of women and its attendant exhaustion. The ordinary self holds the world together and the extraordinary self contains desire and ambition—desires that are almost impossible in the world of familial responsibility. Yet, in the end, the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary is not so clear. Gutowski leads the reader to an unexpected liberation that made me laugh out loud, a rare pleasure in poetry. The Familiar is brilliant, witty, and unafraid to relentlessly question the sacred territory of family responsibility.”
—Jessica Cuello, author of Liar and Yours, Creature
 

“In The Familiar, Sarah Kain Gutowski takes the fragmentation of self to a whole new level. This fabulist poetic narrative of midlife crisis pits the Ordinary Self against the Extraordinary Self—one attuned to the daily mundanities of housekeeping and motherhood, the other hysterical with ambition and adventure—as warring factions of identity. ‘We all house within our skin and brains,’ Gutowski writes, ‘another self or two, whole persons devoted to one aspect/ of twenty-first century life.’ And it’s not too long before ‘shit hits the fan.’ It’s all here: domestic life, travel, sex, even attempted murder. Both deeply analytical and a wild ride, both elevated in lyric language and peppered with lowbrow quips, The Familiar resists parable and acknowledges the inevitably multifaceted nature of selfhood, what is expected of women, and what women expect of themselves. Fierce. Vulnerable. Entertaining.”
—Cynthia Marie Hoffman, author of Exploding Head
 

“Sarah Kain Gutowski’s The Familiar exists as part haunting, part conjuration, and part poetic experiment in which the intricacies and intimacies of a poet’s intertwined selves are revealed in triplicate. Thank heavens, given such a daunting task, that the poet’s ‘inevitable self’ possesses an existential wit and fortitude; these stanzas exude the grit of a ‘Sartrean grandmother,’ who supplants ego, and shadows this intriguing conceit, where extra and ordinary alternately lift off and land—at home in New York, inconspicuous in London, or even spontaneously in Italy. More than navigating shades of chaos and order, The Familiar is that rare collection that meta-captures the trajectories and disparate psyches necessary to the poetic mind. And these poems ordinarily feature extraordinary endings! Readers, you may just glimpse your selves’ frugal, unreasonable, and even indomitable sheen in these dexterous tercets, where we’re lucky enough to be surprised by ourselves, by the audacity of azaleas, by blandness (which is truly camouflage!), and by the wonders of the ordinary and everyday that keep us alive.”
—Matt Schumacher, Managing Editor of Phantom Drift: A Journal of New Fabulism
 

"In [The Familiar], Sarah Kain Gutowski creates a brilliant central metaphor, splitting the speaker into two: an ordinary self and an extraordinary self. That idea is a vehicle to approach the multiplicity of the self: actual, and potential, in memory, dreamed, and the living-breathing writer, mother, and teacher. And so much more, that I feel I cannot find a way to say it in a paragraph: Gutowski’s poems are the way to capture it. I am so happy to find a book that (like Wayward by Dana Spiotta) handles the complexities of women approaching mid-life with such depth and intelligence."
—Ananda Lima in Michigan Quarterly Review
— Ananda Lima

“Incredibly well written… This narrative/non-narrative is incredibly self-aware, smart, and deeply penetrating into our psyches, more than the author’s. All that we do to control our fears, anxieties, and aspects of ourselves that we don’t like; none of it can get rid of them. As she so brilliantly says at the end, 'in the end, no lesson remains.' The Familiar remains forever. Next time we look in the mirror, which Self will gaze back into us?”
—Dylan Webster, author of Dislocated

— Dylan Webster