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About
Buoyancy Control, the latest collection of poems from Vancouverite Adrienne Gruber, explores themes of sexuality, sexual identity, and queerness, while confronting the feelings of loss and longing found in relationships, and the chance glimpse into a new life, while still recovering from a painfully failed connection.
Metaphors of oceans, lakes, and other bodies of water, as well as the creatures that inhabit those spaces, swim and swirl their way through Gruber's languid poems, which are divided into two evocative sections. Though distinguished by their own prologue poems, both sections reveal details of the narrator's examination of life, but from two different perspectives: Section 1, Terra Firma, is an exploration of place, of what we consider solid and secure, and how solidity can betray us. In contrast, Section 2, brings the reader into themes of water and the fluidity of identity, particularly sexual identity and queerness.
This is an honest, at times humorous, and revealing look inside the mind and body of a woman maneuvering through experiences of longing, loss, and the fluidity of sexual identity, only to come out on the other side a more forgiving being from the journey.
Metaphors of oceans, lakes, and other bodies of water, as well as the creatures that inhabit those spaces, swim and swirl their way through Gruber's languid poems, which are divided into two evocative sections. Though distinguished by their own prologue poems, both sections reveal details of the narrator's examination of life, but from two different perspectives: Section 1, Terra Firma, is an exploration of place, of what we consider solid and secure, and how solidity can betray us. In contrast, Section 2, brings the reader into themes of water and the fluidity of identity, particularly sexual identity and queerness.
This is an honest, at times humorous, and revealing look inside the mind and body of a woman maneuvering through experiences of longing, loss, and the fluidity of sexual identity, only to come out on the other side a more forgiving being from the journey.
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Reviews
"Densely, disturbingly erotic, Adrienne Gruber's Buoyancy Control is not a book for the faint of heart. Gruber's erotic reach encompasses the world entire, from undersea creatures to the human body of the beloved. No Hallmark sweetness in this collection-here is a fierce, wet, pulsing hunger, though there is an acute sensitivity in these observations, whether of childbirth, cold-water swimming, or other moments of convulsion and transformation so powerful that they transcend intellect. Here are poems that burst like fireworks, 'all thought blasted into the night sky.'"
Rachel Rose, former Poet Laureate of Vancouver, author of Marry and Burn
"The lust and loneliness that muscle us between open water and inky depth vie for power in Buoyancy Control. Gruber's poems consume aqua life, roadkill, citrus, hotel beds, and dock-edge gargoyles as fuel for 'spit-shined' words that surface as moans and as 'sharp, atomized shrieks.' Plaintive, ecstatic, carnal, these pieces often wonder whether we're 'complete on our own,' while veering between the urgency of self-pleasure, the defensiveness of self-containment, and the wound of self-reflexivity. Plumbing the digestive debris that skates the sea floor, Gruber's poems muck about with our equilibrium. We rise and sink lured by shadowscapes, pleasurelands and the hunt for a healthy gravity."
Brecken Hancock, author of Broom Broom, winner of the 2015 Trillium Book Award for Poetry
"Akin to the Indonesian mimic octopus, the poems in Buoyancy Control 'ascend from the ocean floor,' and proceed to evolve with an uncommon beauty. Both starkly sexual and aposematic, Adrienne Gruber's second book is remarkably controlled, framing the human condition in a world that's constantly shifting. Buoyancy Control is a fearless collection from one of Canada's best emerging poets."
Jim Johnstone, author of Dog Ear