SoundMachine

Rachel Zucker is the author of many books, including SoundMachine (Wave Books, 2019), The Pedestrians (Wave Books, 2014), and Museum of Accidents (Wave Books, 2009), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the co-author (with Arielle Greenberg) of the nonfiction title Home/birth: a poemic and co-editor (also with Arielle Greenberg) of Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama’s First 100 Days and Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections (both from the University of Iowa Press). A graduate of Yale University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Zucker currently teaches poetry at NYU. In 2016 she was a Bagley Wright Lecturer and wrote and delivered a series of talks on poetry, photography, confessionalism, motherhood, and the ethics of representing real people in art. She was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in 2012, a Sustainable Arts Fellowship in 2016, and residencies from The MacDowell Colony and the Vermont Studio Center in 2018. Zucker lives in NYC with her husband and three sons.

• Contents Song of the Dark RoomIt’s the World Committing Suicide Said One MomSeven Beds Six Cities Eight WeeksHours Days Years Unmoor Their OrbitsI Can Barely Stand to Go to WeddingsRough WatersDeath Project [Poem]Let the World Unfurl One Word at a TimeSnapshotFive Months Later I Finally Have Something to SaySoundMachineNeed to KnowIn the EndConfessionalPlanet HulkAfter the New Couples TherapistSex with Famous PoetThe FeelingEnough Is EnoughAnd Still I Speak of ItIt Has Come to My AttentionThe Moon Is in Her Caul TonightThere Are Two MagicsWe Cannot Make Them Happy Behave Passionate Patient Safe SorryResidency

"Artfully layered . . . these pieces defy genre and interrogate the role of wife, mother, and artist as fixed identities. . . . Zucker renders even the simplest inquiries—such as ‘hasn’t anyone tried to stop this?—resonant and profound in this restless and thoughtful book."— starred review,Publishers Weekly