Reader, I

This is a poetry book not exactly about the Brontés but obviously inspired by Charlotte Brontë:

Reader, I

Corey Van Landingham

Sarabande Books

ISBN: 978-1956046250

May 2024

Reader, I draws its title from the conclusion to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: “Reader, I married him.” Spanning the first years of a marriage, the speaker in Reader, I both courts and eschews nuptial myths, as its speaker—tender and callous, skeptical and hopeful, daughter and lover—finds a role for herself in marriage, in history, in something beyond the self. While these poems burn with a Plathian fire, they also address and invite in a reader who is, as in Jane Eyre, a confidant. Steeped in a world of husbands and fathers, patriarchal nations and power structures, Reader, I traverses bowling alleys and hospital rooms, ancient Troy and public swimming pools, to envision dom
estic life as a metaphor for civic life, and vice versa. 

Via Smile Politely.