Jill Bialosky

Jill Bialosky is the author of four volumes of poetry, including The Players (Knopf, 2015) and the forthcoming Asylum: A Personal, Historical and Natural Inquiry in 103 Lyric Sections (Knopf, 2020); three novels, House Under Snow (Harcourt, 2002), The Life Room (Harcourt, 2007), and The Prize (Counterpoint, 2015); and two works of prose, History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life (Atria, 2011) and Poetry Will Save Your Life (Atria, 2017) .

See Work

POETRY / Summer 2020

Why I Thought

By Jill Bialosky

Why I thought I needed to rent a third-floor attic.
Why I thought one mattress on the floor, a desk, a vanity

POETRY / Summer 2020

I Was Washing Dishes

By Jill Bialosky

I was washing dishes in the sink.
My hands were wet. The baby was crying.

POETRY / Summer 2020

& in the Mornings

By Jill Bialosky

& in the mornings sometimes awoke so cold
—the wind in Iowa City was brutal—
those days of doubt, those days of troubled land,
that I did not want to get out of bed &

POETRY / Summer 2020

What Are Words

By Jill Bialosky

What are words when they meet the action
of what they attempt to modify?

POETRY / Summer 2020

In Iowa City

By Jill Bialosky

In Iowa City, the restaurant
where I worked on the weekend,
I befriended another waitress, blond & blue-eyed,

POETRY / Summer 2020

When He Was Small

By Jill Bialosky

When he was small,
I rented a little studio
in a building on Ninety-Fifth Street so I could have a room
of my own to write. The studio was the size of a bathroom.

POETRY / Summer 2020