SO TALL IT ENDS IN HEAVEN
POEMS
Nobody will love you
like this poem does.
Let this poem
fill you. Let it
wash your hair.
It will use
egg whites
and honey.
Maybe you’d like
something different.
Tell this poem
what you want.
Anything.
This Earth.
—from "Love Poem"
.jpg)
“An intimate, assured debut.”
The New York Times
“Unforgettable…. Asks readers to look inward and consider what they truly sacrifice when they live honestly…but more profoundly, it asks them to what lengths they will go in order to heal.”
Southern Review of Books
“Startles with its poignancy and beauty.”
Largehearted Boy
“Remarkable…. One of the most hauntingly patient and achingly fraught collections of the year, a book with more nuance and precision than most debuts ever achieve…. Sure to be a mainstay in American poetics.”
The Poetry Question
“Haunting…. Elegant…. Has an assurance and emotional fluency that makes these poems propulsive page-turners.”
INDY Week
ORDER ONLINE
AMAZON / BOOKSHOP / OPEN BOOKS / POWELL'S / TIN HOUSE
With lush and deeply intimate language, Jayme Ringleb’s debut collection So Tall It Ends in Heaven explores sexuality, estrangement, and the distances we travel for love.
Following the end of a marriage, So Tall It Ends in Heaven’s queer southern speaker tries to restore a relationship with his father. His father lives across an ocean, but more keeps them apart than just that: the father rejected his son long ago after learning that his son is gay. The poems search for answers across the United States and Europe, in and out of historical imagination, as the speaker struggles to separate his understanding of devotion and belonging from the constant losses in his life. Drawing from—and subverting—the formal traditions of love poems, parables, and elegies, the collection claims a vital space for one’s own solace. “Nobody will love you / like this poem does,” the speaker says; “Tell this poem / what you want. // Anything.”
In turns that are ruminative, funny, and tender, Jayme Ringleb’s debut collection questions what and whom one lets go of by coming out—can love, in all its complexities, ever be uncoupled from grief?
POEMS ONLINE
“Love Poem”
“Love Poem So Tall It Ends in Heaven”
“Love Poem to the Son My Father Wished For”
“Self Portrait as Medusa in Shock”
“Threesome with Sea Monsters and Theft”
ADVANCE PRAISE
“A hard-won, triumphant debut.”
Carl Phillips, author of Then the War
“Tremendous. . . .bearing haunting revelations
and a beauty that cuts deep.”
Natalie Shapero, author of Popular Longing
“It’s thrilling to discover a book
you know you’ll revisit for the rest of your life.“
Kaveh Akbar, author of Pilgrim Bell
“Brilliant. . .flawlessly renders both the
macro and the micro wonders of the universe.“
Paige Lewis, author of Space Struck