After the frightening results of the 2016 election, Paula Cisewski adopted a new writing practice and coping mechanism. She would invite a friend over for tea and a tarot reading. Later she would share with them the first draft of a poem inspired by the cards, the conversation, and whatever of the world had leaked in. The practice made space for meaningful communication in an uncertain time."Precise, furious, political, controversial, paradoxical, provocative, confessional, intimate, friendly, honest, metric, exuberant, crazy, subdued poetry," Grzegorz Kwiatowski wrote in praise of The Becoming Game. "Everything here contradicts and collides because this poetry contains many voices, many styles, many stories, but they all belong to one author. "
Paula Cisewski's previous books include Ceremonies for No Repair, Quitter (Diode Editions Book Prize winner), The Threatened Everything, Ghost Fargo (Nightboat Poetry Prize winner, selected by Franz Wright), Upon Arrival, and several chapbooks. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from organizations including the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Oberholtzer Foundation, and Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts.
"Paula Cisewski's voice in verse captivates and sings. The Becoming Game is a masterful work powered by her radiant imagination and her uncommon emotional range and depth. Cisewski's voice is so prominent and clear here that each poem feels read to you as much as read by you. You will hear her, right by your side, pointing out every little bird, art's magnificent and sometimes perplexing power, everything in between, and possibilities beyond." — Michael Kleber-Diggs, Author of Worldly Things
"Paula Cisewski's The Becoming Game—is a volume that spins the wheel of fortune in the midst of a troubling zeitgeist. Brilliantly conceptualized and sinuously rendered, the poems here engage and improvise with the day-to-day of the speaker's world: news, the natural world, art, and philosophy. The Becoming Game shuffles the arcana into poems that are communal, intimate, divinatory, and linguistically exquisite. This book is a compelling tour-de-force of cartomancy and poetry." — Lee Ann Roripaugh, Author of tsunami vs. the fukushima 50
"Precise, furious, political, controversial, paradoxical, provocative, confessional, intimate, friendly, honest, metric, exuberant, crazy, subdued poetry. Everything here contradicts and collides because this poetry contains many voices, many styles, many stories, but they all belong to one author. " — Grzegorz Kwiatowski, Author of Crops
