Emerson, a non-speaking, autistic writer, communicates a sublime personal cosmology in poems vibrating with an energy that derives, in part, from surprising repetitions ... Emerson’s work provokes ecological awareness through musings about animal consciousness, plant life, and the paradox of an individual psyche that might engage in an elemental dissolution into snow, sunlight, or mud ... [an] unforgettable collection[.]
As the inaugural book in a groundbreaking series, The Kissing of Kissing carries a heavy responsibility. It has to represent poets like Emerson and broaden readers’ notions of what poetry can be. It does all of this and also delivers well-crafted, exciting poetry ... In general, the repetition provides structure, both to the individual poems and to the collection as a whole. Words like 'freedom,' 'light,' 'kissing,' and 'hell' loop around again and again, as they might in a sestina or a ghazal, or in some free verse collections ... Since many of the words in her poems come from this stable of vocabulary, rarer words...spring from the text with fresh urgency. Emerson often writes in response to her own paintings, and this use of language reminded me of paint layered on a canvas, with these rarer words standing out like an orb of color in a Rousseauian jungle ... There are moments where the tone sounds slightly naïve, where words like 'soul' made me recall poetry workshop dictums, but overall, it’s as though her position, at a certain remove from typical society, allows her to consider more seriously life’s mysteries ... a brilliant new voice like Emerson’s should be celebrated. The Kissing of Kissing is a valuable addition to the world of poetry, both for what it can teach us about neurodiversity and about being human.
Hannah Emerson has exploded cultural assumptions about how we should write, how we should communicate, and what it means to be alive ... Emerson uses repetition like a weaver at a loom, knotting the same words (kiss, try, breath, life, yes, yes, yes, please) together over and over in dozens of bright, unique poetic patterns. The resulting collection is cohesive and startling. It is moving—as a beautiful song is moving, yes, but also as a river moves, rushing toward a waterfall ... The poems are guided meditations, of a sort, with Emerson drawing the reader out of their trance and into the real world, which to her is grander, vaster, and freer than we all might realize ... In the crowded landscape of modern poetics, which often conflate obfuscation with artistry, The Kissing of Kissing stands out, stark and radical in its directness ... Emerson plays the imperative voice like an instrument, shifting its tone from forceful to didactic to pleading, always delivering, always impelling the reader forward.
... the most original collection of poetry I’ve read in years. Emerson uses sparse language, repetition, and the imperative mood to create a rhythm that runs through the book like a heartbeat. She makes forms and breaks forms and in doing so lets loose the sounds of the universe ... Emerson’s poetry works simultaneously on the individual and cosmic scales. The rule of all for one and one for all is a constant theme and delight in her poems. Her ability to transmit the full-body experience of joy is rivaled only by Whitman ... Please, please read this book. Your mind and your poetry and your life will be better for it.
In spectacular bursts of movement and color, Emerson lives the gamut of autistic feeling. These poems, which blur the boundary between flesh and text, body and poem, affirm the collection’s opening demand: 'Please get that great animals are all / autistic' ... Emerson’s associative, unpunctuated, and perpetually-surprising wordwork recalls a body that thinks, feels, and refuses to sit still—a body whose thoughts pour out in flaps, twirls, and echoes, each movement a kiss ... This is a lively text ... yes yes. This oft-repeated phrase anchoring the collection, as well as other doubled words, achieve distance from their pathologization as autistic 'echolalia' and resignify as essential to the art of autistic being ... Autistic life is art. Emerson’s generative tangle with language reconfigures autistic bodyminds not as sites of emptiness, but as agents of creative transformation.
... groundbreaking ... The raw beauty of each individual poem — and the entire book — is stunning and absolutely confident in its structural integrity.
Emerson makes great use of repetition, such as with phrases that spiral in and out of the poems. This signals a certain urgency and makes the tone at once familiar and fresh. The rhythmic quality of each piece is similar, creating a steady pulse throughout the collection. Every poem feels alive with a fierce energy, a force that is balanced by the book's design. Each full page of white space grounds readers, creating a stillness within the movement ... This arresting collection is the first in Milkweed's Multiverse series, titles written and curated by the neurodivergent. It makes a remarkable statement, both visually and verbally.
In spectacular bursts of movement and color, Emerson lives the gamut of autistic feeling ... Emerson’s associative, unpunctuated, and perpetually-surprising wordwork recalls a body that thinks, feels, and refuses to sit still –– a body whose thoughts pour out in flaps, twirls, and echoes, each movement a kiss ... This is a lively text ... The text repeatedly calls upon the reader to challenge our perceptions of embodied and enminded difference. It conjures generative opacity with its vibrant, tactile verse ... Moreover, Emerson is shameless, in the best possible way ... Emerson’s generative tangle with language reconfigures autistic bodyminds not as sites of emptiness, but as agents of creative transformation ... Throughout, we readers are held. We are invited to miss understanding, to fly, fall, and try again.
... an invitation to see with new eyes. Hypnotic and tender, these poems pluck the strings that connect us—to the sun, to the hawk, to the dirt and the worms inside it—and call for us to listen as they vibrate ... This collection is full of meetings—between ourselves, creatures, and the elemental forces that surround us. Emerson’s poems create space for these meetings to take place, and for the reader, through reading and rereading, to absorb their physicality. She pushes the reader out of the cerebral and into the physical through her lyrical repetitions ... If you want to question what you know and how you have come to know it, The Kissing of Kissing is a must-read. Emerson’s collection will leave you dazzled, aching, and hopeful.
Emerson’s startling, inventive debut—the first entry in Milkweed’s new Multiverse series dedicated to neurodivergent writers—finds joy in negotiating different understandings of the world ... The collection is propelled by an imperative mood and voice, though it is no less meditative for it. Details are scant, but images repeat on a scale that shifts from the immediate, worldly, and intimate to the cosmic...challenging the reader to expand their perception and vision through this unusual and intriguing approach to form.
