Semidomesticated - by Jonie McIntire (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Jonie McIntire's "Semidomesticated" is looking and longing among the kitchen utensils, clearance aisles, and chemotherapy appointments that make up a life. There is so much generosity here that speaks to the daily trials we find ourselves in, as we navigate between homes and doctor's offices and jobs. How do we deal with personal loss in the face of so much being lost every day? What happens when "As if, like a miracle, all of that just being there/ added up to something, ..." What happens is a pure poetic voice and a calmness of spirit-sometimes a murmur, sometimes a roar-that assuredly guides us on these journeys of a daughter, a mother, a lover, a true friend. It is a voice we can trust to give, and keep us going. It is a voice we need to be listening to. - Timothy Geiger, author of Weatherbox, winner of the 2019 Vern Rutsala Poetry Award, (Cloudbank Books, 2019), The Curse of Pheromones, (Main Street Rag Press, 2008) & Blue Light Factory, (Spoon River Poetry Press, 1999) and nine chapbooks, most recently Radium(Cabaret Press, 2015). He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize XVIII and a Holt, Rinehart and Winston Award in Literature.

Review Quotes

Semidomesticated, Toledo poet Jonie McIntire's third volume of poetry, takes nothing for granted. It is sincere, unsentimental, intelligent, and invested with uneasy attachment, yet features keen observations about contemporary life and the struggle to keep focused and keep writing through it all. Semidomesticated focuses on family, community, living through the power plays and burdens of the workforce. It examines these subjects with a sense of wit and irony, with originality, self-awareness, with authenticity in voice and poetic identity.

Readers who seek honesty and intelligence will delight in Semidomesticated because McIntire's poetry defies sentimentality; it is rooted in the understanding that the job of the poet is not to make something pretty or to make language carry the weight of the poet's expectation or desire, but instead, to pay attention, to interrogate, to find broken spaces and reject the easy fix. Each poem resonates with earned sensibility and a kind of unsentimental realism that has the ability to both connect and investigate, to hold the world at arm's length, while not turning away from attachment.

This is a book to enjoy and return to. Each poem is as plain-spoken as a conversation, yet through its choice of subject matter and through the attention of the poet, the poetry allows the readers to feel more present in their own lives. McIntire's poetic intelligence buries itself deep in the heart of the reader, and with each reading, the discoveries will deepen.

- Bonnie Proudfoot, author of Goshen Road (Swallow Press, 2020), selected for the Women's National Book Association's Great Group Reads and long listed for the 2021 PEN/Hemingway Award for Best Debut Novel

In Semidomesticated, Jonie McIntire gives us a candid glimpse inside of the everyday, making the jejune beautiful through imagery, and revealing the hidden parts with the intimacy of a close friend with a practiced eye. She also shows us the messy parts of life--anxiety, sickness, and violence--but with deftness of a thoughtful poet. - DeMisty Bellinger, author of Peculiar Heritage (Mason Jar Press, 2021) and Rubbing Elbows (Finishing Line Press, 2017). She is a poetry editor at Malarkey Books and alumni reader at Prairie Schooner.