Lonely Women Make Good Lovers

KeetjeKuipers is the author of four books of poems, all from BOAEditions: Beautiful in the Mouth (2010); The Keys to the Jail (2014); All Its Charms (2019); and Lonely Women Make Good Lovers (2025). Keetje’s poetry and prose haveappeared in The New York Times and over a hundred other magazines. Keetje iscurrently the Editor of Poetry Northwest, and teachesat universities and conferences around the world, including at the dual-language writers’ gathering Under the Volcanoin Tepoztlán, Mexico. Her home is in Missoula, Montana, at the foot of the RattlesnakeWilderness. She lives there with her wife and their two children.

• With Garbo in Palm SpringsAt Forty, the Mountains Are More GreenLonely women make good lovers,Getting Back TogetherThe Magician at the WoodpileBleedingAt My Daughter’s Riding LessonSpa DaysI Didn’t Know What I Didn’t KnowIn the Outdoor Shower with My Pregnant WifeCremello HorseI wasn’t trying to steal her boyfriend,SehnsuchtPoikilothermicLove Letter to a Friend I Cannot ReachI, too, took pictures of my bodyBrace CoveEmesisI Let Her Let ThemThe day after your mom dies, I go to see the witches,The WoundBoat Puller / Bird Woman / Madame CharbonneauWalking LessonsPregnant Girl CreekWashing My Daughter’s ClothesSelfishnessMy Mother Bought Me a ScarfInterviewCrossingLive Webcam: Ponte delle Guglie, Venice; March 2020Multi-Generational HouseholdEating Sea UrchinAt Our Hotel Under the VolcanoMeatSummer, AgainSeason Finale3,000 Miles Away from HomeDiapauseEating an Orange Before Getting Out of the Swimming PoolGoogling My ExGreek ChorusThe RatsNow that we’ve been married all these years,

"Kuipers’s wickedly erotic and ingenious fourth collection (after All Its Charms) explores identity and how the body is invested with meaning that is continuously shifting. Among other topics, these poems address coming to terms with one’s evolving sexuality (notably in 'The Magician’s Woodpile,' which depicts the speaker setting fire to a pile of penises), the adrenaline of new romance, and the steady simmer of attraction to a long-term partner. Kuipers expertly mixes frank expressions of sexual desire with the domestic, subverting common preconceptions and breaking arbitrary boundaries surrounding the body. 'In the Outdoor Shower with My Pregnant Wife' is a rapturous ode not only to a woman’s pregnant body but to the ways in which it is permanently altered by pregnancy: 'I want already/ the body scarred by stretch marks, the extra flap/ of skin to hang soft at her waist, the feet/ that will never again be quite so small.' Kuipers is exceptional at setting the scene with a carefully chosen detail, as in 'The Wound,' which begins, 'It was the winter the dog swallowed// a sewing needle.' This wide-ranging collection tackles love in its varied forms with originality and hard-won wisdom. (Apr.)" —Publishers Weekly, starred review ★"The poems are elegant, earthy, and pertinent. Kuipers moves language marvelously, and I love her understatedness, making lyrics of what could be ‘politicized’ texts, which are all the more persuasive for the transformation." —Marilyn Hacker, National Book Award and PEN/Voelcker Award-winner"Keetje Kuipers’ Lonely Women Make Good Lovers is a staggering, unpredictable, and inexorable collection. Caught in the nexus of hunger and ruin, Kuipers’ speaker explores the atmosphere between what she knows or almost knows and what cannot be explained. Recognition of the self, of others, Kuipers shows us, is a practice. A compelling read, these poems are nimble and vulnerable, mapping a return to the self, a return to longing, a return to the archive of what the body remembers." —Donika Kelly, Kate Tufts Discovery Award-winner and author of The Renunciations"How does romantic love bring us together—or isolate, or confound? What if there's a baby on the way? What if we come to each other naked as birds in flight, as stripped logs, as old photographs, as pure ideas? What does a grown-up, clear, thoughtful, emotionally available, gifted lesbian poet get when—decades after Adrienne Rich—she comes up, still wearing her tanks, and takes her mask off, after the proverbial wreck, and makes ‘a pact with the world,’ with her wife, with their earth and air? This poet is your poet. Here are your poems." —Stephanie Burt, author of We Are Mermaids and Professor of English at Harvard University