Public radio poetry commentator Elizabeth Austen tests the boundaries between the known and the unknowable in her debut poetry collection, Every Dress a Decision.
The aftermath of a brother’s mysterious death forms a subtle narrative spine, around which other pressing questions revolve. In a voice both lyrical and wry, Austen’s poems engage headlong in the contradictions of 21st century social expectations, desires and identity.
Read reviews in the Yakima Herald, Prick of the Spindle or at the Seattle SLOG.
Available in bookstores such as Open Books and Elliott Bay Books, at Blue Begonia Press, and at these readings.
“If Elizabeth Austen is “between gods for the moment,” it’s because—gratefully!—she hovers and dances close to the vestigial, the elusive, and the transitory. She sees with a steely eye. She sings with the purest pitch. By turns tender and tough, spare and lush, these poems speak to and for the fleeting, fleeing world. An absolutely stunning and cohesive first book by a first-rate poet! Every Dress a Decision is a joy to read, and reread. —Nance Van Winckel
“Elizabeth Austen’s poems are pellucid, interior, and powerfully original in both vision and voice. This book welcomes into our view a writer of language-substance, awake ear, and revealed—and revealing—heart.” —Jane Hirshfield
“Elizabeth Austen’s poems have great emotional range, formal rigor and an ambition of scope that is tempered beautifully by a considered intimacy. A poetry both luminous and grounded in the world.” —Chris Abani, Sanctificum and Hands Washing Water
[...] poet, performer, and teacher, Elizabeth is the author of the poetry collection Every Dress a Decision, forthcoming from Blue Begonia Press next month, and the chapbooks The Girl Who Goes Alone [...]
[...] click over to check them out. Today’s prompt is from Seattle poet Elizabeth Austen, author of Every Dress a Decision, and it’ll turn your work on its head (it’s called Cultivating Opposites). And [...]
[...] Every Dress a Decision [...]
As one of the “linear readers” at Elliott Bay, I thought of a better way of describing how the re-ordering of poems in Every Dress a Decision works. The dedications and first poems changes the key of the poems from major to minor, and with understandably heartbreaking results. Another great gift for me was a complete re-interpretation of “The Girl Who Goes Alone.” While it remains an excellent feminist manifesto, coming at the end of the preceding poems, it becomes a guidebook through the wilderness of being human that anyone can use.
Thank you!
In the Spring 2011 edition of my own quarterly e-newsletter (I’m a Jungian psychotherapist in Seattle), I’ve included a link to the segment on Elizabeth on The Seattle Channel’s “Art Zone” with Nancy Guppy. A friend sent me an email weeks ago with a link to the segment…I was so intrigued–by both the poetry itself and the presence with which Elizabeth performed it–that I made the effort to attend her reading at Elliott Bay Books…which only confirmed and deepened my first impressions. To view the newsletter on my web site, go to: http://www.dankeusal.com/ and follow the link at the bottom of the page.
[...] of being “the only girl in the woods.” I’m reminded of Elizabeth Austen’s poem in her book Every Dress a Decision. The poem is “The Girl Who Goes Alone” and has the [...]
[...] Every Dress a Decision [...]