A record of night (Paperback)

"In Kit Steitz's collection, a record of night, the reader travels down a lazy river, up to lusty stars and back down to the roots of an old oak. One is instantly reminded of the intimate connection between the human spirit and the fallible sentient beings we encounter. 'I suppose it's dangerous to fall' and you do, through the 'skidding landscape, frozen star beams, and nests of snakes'. Though short, a record of night is packed full of imagery sliced down to the raw nuance of an immediate sting. This is a collection of poems that removes you from the concrete and noise and positions the imagination in the 'Heliopolis' of what can be. My trek through these pages is always a joy and always a surprise as something new pops out like 'Jesuit bones'." -Cindy Droege, contributing anthology author to Boomtown and Topograph: New Writing for the Carolinas and the Landscape Beyond. "Steitz's record of night is a poetic invitation to walk a moonlit path, along the side of an autumnal lake on which, all of the majesty of the star-speckled sky is reflected, and begs to be disturbed. The words form a graceful lamentation while an authentic glow of hope emanates from the pages. These are nocturnal love songs, with occasional breaths so soft, one serves the poems best to whisper the words. The natural world haunts and lingers between the lines, and one often feels the absolute vast space which surrounds the human heart. Of particular note, "eighty-eight years" is a stand-out of sentimental togetherness while "a gift from heliopolis' offers a glimpse of something so dear, yet just out of reach. Steitz, true to their roots, presents a hearty and organic Midwestern vista stretched over paper-thin heart. The poems give the reader that a glimmer of a star though the caliginosity of night; beautiful and quiet from afar, yet massive in their power and scale." -E.M. Knowles, Author of Diary of Mimosa CreekThese poems are about the people I fell in love with, the house where Mel and I lived, and the land that I love. I chose to publish a record of night through Amazon because these are also poems I've shared on my blog, ohmyfoes.blogspot.com, and in The Ivy Review, a literary journal published by Columbia College, with a few unpublished. I started my blog to help me engage with my writing again- part of this process included publishing works-in-progress. My blog has, and continues to be, an important part of my process as a writer, but I wanted to share the revised poems I would otherwise be unable to submit to journals. Since the original publication of this chapbook, I now write under the name that best fits the whole of me, Kit Steitz (pronouns they/them). This chapbook been altered to reflect this.