Sweet Gothic

“Sweet Gothic is an exquisite chiaroscuro of grief and grace, loss and integration. As harmony completes a melody through notes that can never reach, this collection invites us into the contradictions of connection and absence. We reckon with what is unsolved and unhealed. We reach deep into our open spaces.”


—Sage Cohen, author of Writing the Life Poetic





“In Sweet Gothic, exquisite details echo from poem to poem, creating a world of generations: a birth mother lost but always called to, a storied sister never met, and students with their quirks of innocence. By turns audacious, funny, elegant, and heartbreaking, these poems search the borders between a family born to and one given, between past and present, but always rooted deeply in Appalachia. An American symphony of a book, Sweet Gothic shows poet Colette Tennant at the height of her powers.”


—Amy Miller, author of Astronauts





“In Sweet Gothic, Colette Tennant gives us a rich, deeply imagined primer to study, to savor. A number of these poems are about her students, and who wouldn’t want to be her student, listening as this collection teaches ‘metaphors for hunger,’ and ‘synonyms for want’? Full of startling leaps, intriguing allusions, and resonant tropes, these poems offer nothing less than the marvels of both wonderment and wondering.”


—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate emerita