Callie Siskel

May 28, 2024 | poetryfoundation.org | Callie Siskel |Virginia Konchan |Edgar Allan Poe

Heavy and constricting is the specter of death. Though its monuments in literature are often haunted by a procession of literal ghosts, these presences also materialize in protagonists’ memories. Both approaches reflect humanity’s inability to move beyond trauma or grievance. The cessation of the body in exchange for a spirit effectively forces a bait-and-switch, with the physical act of dying supplanted by the active forces of a person’s attempt to comprehend it.

Mar 26, 2024 | poetryfoundation.org | Callie Siskel |Virginia Konchan

Callie Siskel’s elegiac debut, Two Minds, archives and distills the psychic disequilibrium wrought by a father’s early death. “Somewhere on earth is my Matryoshka doll,” writes Siskel in the book’s opening poem, “Mise en Abyme,” noting that “No generation lives neatly inside another.” “Messenger” constellates objective correlatives for grief: Picture a symbol of what you want to remember. An anchor for the sea, a cuirass for a battle scene.

Mar 14, 2024 | nybooks.com | Callie Siskel

In a past life              I was not defined by his death. …                                  I was not rerouted like a plane through                                      Charlotte. …                                  I was part of a “nuclear family,” the phrasing                                      of which appears first in 1924 as “the nuclear                                      family complex.”…                                  I did not have a complex.

Dec 18, 2023 | theparisreview.org | Callie Siskel

In early March of 2021, Louise Glück visited Claremont McKenna College in Southern California, where I teach. Because of COVID, she was afraid to fly on a small plane to our regional airport, so I drove her myself from Berkeley, where, for some years, she rented a house during the winters.

Jun 21, 2023 | yalereview.org | Callie Siskel

The surface of the waterdoes not offer perspective,only the flat reality of the boyin a puffed-up jacket,crouched over water so darkly litone might mistake itfor high gloss on a stained floor. No, that’s the earthunder his hands, one hand at the water’s edge,the other, turned inward, immersed. A single knee exposed—the moon lost in its orbitaround a void. The water unites the boy and what the boy sees. The water is the means; it does not mean anything.