Underlife

The dynamics of race, family, motherhood, career, sex and ultimately, transformation are explored in this debut collection. Underlife represents the wilderness of thought and emotion hidden away from the external world. Through O’Neil’s narratives we see our lives as if for the first time.

January Gill O’Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University, and the author of Glitter Road (2024), Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009), all published by CavanKerry Press. The former executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, she currently serves on AWP’s Board of Directors. Her poem, “At the Rededication of the Emmett Till Memorial,” was a cowinner of the 2022 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award. The recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Cave Canem, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, O’Neil was also the 2019–2020 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.

Nothing Fancy

I am from hush puppies & barbecue
from chitlins & fatbacks
hog maws & hog jaws & grits & scrapple.
Outside stands a dogwood tree we have let
overgrow from laziness
& a driveway cracked
with blades of grass.
I am from Rosemary & Stanley,
the last model in the series.
Around our house honeysuckle blesses the air,
seasons the heat of summer into a main dish.
I am a plum black garnish to the day.
Wafts of smoke from pots on the stove
steam the kitchen.
Salt & Pepper stand at attention
next to the potholders on the counter.
Dinner is ready—no time for parsley.

The poems in January O’Neil’s Underlife offer masterfully complex portraits of childhood—both through the speaker’s memory and observations of her own children. She writes equally well about sex, marriage, rural life, and the suburbs with candid observations and evocative imagery. O’Neil’s collection is substantial, playful, and compassionate—even when dealing with difficult themes such as alcoholism and racism. Her narrative threads take surprising and enigmatic leaps, yet are always clear, accessible, wonderfully real.
— Denise Duhamel

In those places where we keep our childhoods and our children are all the magnificent and malicious ingredients of our lives. In her first collection, January Gill O’Neil praises life with a subtle wisdom wrapped inside the most delicious language. Underlife is an exact eloquence, an excellent beginning.
— Afaa Michael Weaver

November 2009
92 pp
Trade paper – 6 X 9.25
$16
978-1-933880-16-7