A Door on the River - Jessica Hornik

In this remarkable first book, Hornik’s poems carry a quiet power rooted in nature, place, and family. We find our own lives in hers—in lyrics that sing of the natural world, the close-held territory of home, the unvoiced drama of family life, of what it means to be the “Invisible Woman.” A Door on the River marks the emergence of a beautiful, confident voice in the landscape of American poetry.

How the Invisible Woman Sees Herself
Working alone in the house,
I look to the solitary sculls
passing on the river
for a sense that I am
among others.
The geese (my dogs)
convene in the yard
near the water.
A summer
in which much has passed
is now folded and put away.
The quiet is like a pie
behind glass, uncut.
 

Jessica Hornik was born and raised in upstate New York and earned degrees from Cornell and New York University. Her poems have appeared in the Atlantic, Poetry, the New Republic, National Review, the Times Literary Supplement, the Yale Review, and many other publications. She and her family make their home in a hamlet along the Mohawk River.