Beautiful in the Mouth
(BOA Editions, 2010)
Winner of the 2009 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize

What happens when the things we care for—children, lovers, parents, dreams, homes—are taken away? What populates our landscapes and how do we perceive those objects? Written over the course of five years and a geographic journey spanning Paris to New York to Montana, Kuipers’ debut collection of poems, Beautiful in the Mouth, examines contemporary female loss in terms of literal and figurative geography: the empty bedroom of a dead child, a clear-cut hillside outside of a logging town. Kuipers continues in the spirit of poets like Elizabeth Bishop to examine how loss forces itself upon unwilling landscapes and how those landscapes must alter to receive that loss.

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“I was immediately struck by the boldness of imagination, the strange cadences, and wild music of these poems. We should be glad that young poets like Keetje Kuipers are making their voices heard not by tearing up the old language but by making the old language new.”
—Thomas Lux

"These soulful poems travel the landscape of body, desire, loss, and love’s conflicted ecstasies. From wilderness to big cities, coastlines to dive bars, nothing goes unnoticed or unpraised, down to the faded roses on the motel wallpaper. Kuipers’ voice haunts, indelible with mourning, grace and an elegant wisdom. This is a poet beautiful in the mouth."
—Dorianne Laux

"These are poems with an unmistakeable sense of adventure. They attempt large themes, mixing the erotic with landscape and memory. Keetje Kuipers writes about subjects as different as Memorial Day, a soccer team and a Northwestern spring. But the real adventures here are not just in theme. They are also in tone, craft and voice. This is a memorable first collection."
—Eavan Boland

"Brooklyn parties and Montana creeks. Merle Haggard and girls' soccer teams. Hurricanes and gullies, eviction notices and women's shoes. These are a few of the disparate things that make up Kuipers' landscapes of love, unrest and womanhood--familiar American landscapes here made eerily, winningly unfamiliar. There's a lyric glow, a breadth of feeling and a frank sensuality to this book that feels like the past pushing into the future. A pleasure to read."
—Daisy Fried

(Read poems from Beautiful in the Mouth)