How They Fell

In How They Fell, Boutelle’s poems combine fantasy and reality in a far-reaching series of contexts: a Scottish girlhood, Adam and Eve’s experiences when they are expelled from the Garden, the love between a man and a woman, and horrific events in both Scotland and London. The point of view of the poems is often personal and vulnerable, but there is a strong humorous strain, as in the description of the Pope’s toothpaste and Her Majesty’s hairdresser. The work is eclectic beyond description, but hangs together by the common thread of emotions experienced.

Annie Boutelle, born and raised in Scotland, was educated at the University of St. Andrews and New York University. She teaches in the English Department at Smith College, where she founded the Poetry Center. She lives with her husband in western Massachusetts. How They Fell released with CavanKerry Press in 2014.

A fiery intelligence, at times a fury, empower this remarkable book. After invoking the ancient sibyl, the poems, as if crossing a stony threshold, enter a communal space, the voice deepening into another register—one resonant with an older world, in touch with what is feral in us, where the erotic and the demonic meet, “and the weight falling, and lightness rising, and pain/and honey mixed—”. These are beautiful, fearless poems, their language equal to the most fearsome occasions.
— Eleanor Wilner

From first to last, How They Fell is a stunning collection; Boutelle’s is a voice the reader trusts—the music unfolding syllable by syllable, the craft impeccable, and the poems bold, wise, sensual. There’s vision here, and love for the world that was, and the world that is—the poet asking the reader to contemplate “who / we might have been, or who dreamed / us up… / and who / were we, and what might not be left?” She reminds us “how silly / to think the mask could hold. / But sweet—let’s not discount / the sweetness.” How They Fell is a book to savor, to celebrate to come back to over and over.
— Carol Potter

October 2014
92 pp
Trade paper – 6 X 9.25
$16
ISBN 978-1-933880-44-0