Agate Head / Stone Soup

Quotes

“Her return to poetry is a genuine event, and across Agate Head / Stone Soup there are countless moments that remind you that her poetic voice is unique: charming, whimsical, intimate; able to deliver images of great beauty, piercing philosophical insights and glimpses into a creative life behind the public persona . . . Time and again Lockwood leaves you with the distinct impression that she can magically make the profane into the profound, the holy into the hilarious.”
—The Guardian

“A book of beautiful and moving moments.”
—The Times

“Interspersed between reflections on millennia-old rock and long-dead poets are distinctly contemporary, quotidian experiences. . . . There are repeated images: the beautiful sliced stones, her and Jason cycling on a tandem bicycle, the ghosts of dead poets”
—The Observer

“Patricia Lockwood is very good at surprise . . . Her tone tightropes between total control and absurdist abandon, but each verse is reliably, hypnotically spangled with detail . . . Better yet are the tartly fun bits in which she employs impossible colloquialisms like ‘lizardmaxxed’ to describe someone lying out in the sun, or when she remarks that the couple kissing in the airport terminal “look related but who doesn’t. . . . Just as the concentric ripples within every agate are unique, Lockwood offers something unique here; these moments when levity and quirk give way to bracing depth.”
—America Magazine

“Memoir, fiction, poetry, the back of a cereal box—if Patricia Lockwood’s writing it, I’m in. . . . Her words typically cause my mind to bend, refracted as though through a prism.”
—Garden & Gun

“A poetry collection in two parts, Lockwood’s newest release traces her time as a metalsmith with her signature, memoiristic charm.”
—Cultured Magazine

“You can hear echoes of Plath through Agate Head.”
—The New Statesman

“A brilliant double collection demonstrative of profound maturity in both technical skill and emotional relay, and conversational enough that it's an easy entry point for those who don't typically read much poetry.”
—WhoEvenReads

“She’s droll in every medium . . . able to afford topics including Sylvia Plath, milf culture, geology, AI slop and the Berenstain Bears the same levels of interest and scrutiny. ... The act of cutting. The act of looking. The act of seeing. All studded with quartz and limestone and onyx.”
—AnOther Magazine

“A brilliant way of capturing modern life.”
—The Walrus

“Patricia Lockwood is still the coolest poet out there.”
—Hyperallergic

“[Agate Head / Stone Soup]’s vivid attention to the natural world and exuberant imagination make it rewarding.”
—Publishers Weekly