Some Churches

By Tasha Cotter

Churches are fixed structures that enable intangible beliefs. In Some Churches, Tasha Cotter gives words similar power to transform. Each poem in this collection is like a penance, a salve when "we are strangled by the walls," when we feel like only "shell and shadow." Here's a book that fills the spaces between "what we say / aloud" with tight lin

• Language: English
• Publisher: GreencupBooks
• Release date: Apr 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9780996354509

Tasha Cotter

Tasha Cotter is the author of three books of poetry. A graduate of the University of Kentucky and the Bluegrass Writers Studio, she is a recipient of grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Kentucky Center, and the University of Kentucky Women's Forum. She makes her home on Whidbey Island in Washington State. Us, in Pieces is her debut novel. Follow her on Instagram @tashcotter, Twitter @tashcotter, and Facebook at Tasha cotter - Author.

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Praise for Some Churches

Churches are fixed structures that enable intangible beliefs. In Some Churches, Tasha Cotter gives words similar power to transform. Each poem in this collection is like a penance, a salve when we are strangled by the walls, when we feel like only shell and shadow. Here’s a book that fills the spaces between what we say / aloud with tight lines and fresh thoughts; a worthy poetic companion as we drink the galaxy and try to locate an edge." – Nick Ripatrazone, author of This Is Not About Birds and Oblations

When will the past be done with us? asks Tasha Cotter’s poem Stranger, one of many instances in Some Churches where the reader is confronted with truths few poems dare to approach. Like Szymborska, Cotter manages to crystallize moments of transcendent simplicity, and to make memory palpable. Illuminated with images both familiar and surreal, the poems of Some Churches give us a new reverence for the everyday. –Mary Biddinger, author of O Holy Insurgency and Saint Monica

The line Is this the end? appears in this book’s final poem, but all the others seem to ask that same question. They languor in every moment, and simultaneously manage to be timeless. The smaller the poem, the more expansive the idea: that’s the poet’s best move, and Cotter pulls it off beautifully—even when she writes about Bananagrams or the Ultratech Computer parking lot. She knows something that I don’t, and I feel like it’s an act of generosity to share so much so well in these pages. – Adam Robinson, founder of Publishing Genius

In one poem of Tasha Cotter’s new collection, Some Churches, the narrator asks, When will the past be done with us? The answer, judging from the bulk of the poems in this collection, is never. The past is ever-present. Sonic Memory ends this way: I still recall the sound / of the rupture in orbit, how the sky pelted gray rocks that echoed / off our backs as white lightning tinged with indigo crashed our shores. And in Animal in a Bell Jar, she writes: She senses something has been locked up and she did the locking. She recalls a time when a small bird tried to land on her and how she wouldn’t let it. Throughout the collection, we are repeatedly startled: my throat glistens with an ice-slick lullaby, and This house listens like a glass bottle, and Everyone was looking up music videos from the ‘90s and it was dark except for a strand of twinkle lights someone had thrown up. These poems, like the twinkle lights, illuminate Cotter’s past by emphasizing the darkness. Prepare to be charmed. –Charles