Praise
Burning the Ghost Light
Enter a world where theater and life intersect. Through four carefully crafted acts, this collection unpacks the roles we play in our relationships: whether with our parents, our lovers, or even the reflection in our mirrors.
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Inspired by elements of the stage, Burning the Ghost Light features a cast of characters, dialogue, and vivid theater imagery, creating a reading experience that's both introspective and performative. It delves into the ways we perform for others without even realizing it, and how that performance shapes our identities. What happens when we strip away the masks we've worn for so long? What truths are left behind when the lights fade and the curtain falls?
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These poems are for anyone who has ever wrestled with the complexity of being human. Blending the deeply personal with the profoundly universal, Burning the Ghost Light speaks to those who find themselves constantly straddling the line between authenticity and expectation.
It will stay with you long after the final act.
"Caitlin Conlon has written an innovative and unyielding powerhouse of a book. In Burning the Ghost Light, Conlon does what all the best poets do: she slows down each moment and lets the reader savor each ache and awe, life’s entrances and exits, to create an emotional landscape so vulnerable, so lived-in, it takes your breath away. From grocery lists to thrift store receipts to deleted scenes, Conlon engineers strange and surprising forms to examine how family, grief, and intimacy tangle and transform us. This genre-bending collection expertly utilizes the urgency of playwriting, prose's deep interiority, and poetry's stark surrealness. Its lyrical language will leave you audibly gasping as you fly through its pages. Burning the Ghost Light is hands down one of the most honest and inventive collections I’ve read in years.”
— Kelly Grace Thomas, author of Boat Burned
“'The heart is a verb that fragments / howls,' writes Caitlin Conlon in this clear-eyed & scintillatingly original sophomore collection. Burning the Ghost Light insists upon the integrity of its documentation, interrogating the senseless & earned griefs of its players with extraordinary precision & empathy. Across four acts that increasingly rupture the ever-porous boundary between speaker & subject, a mirror held up to the mother reflects the beloved; forward motion into healing gives way to the lingering blisters of childhood neglect; the performer’s shimmering mask drops as the velvet curtain rises. With a gift for plucking improbable tendernesses from the mundane landscapes of memory, Conlon’s speakers haunt & hallow the stages they inhabit, in all their fragmentation & howling. This book dives fearlessly into the rippling undertow of the self—& on the brink of drowning, it breaks the surface of the water, re-emerges gasping & alive."
—Topaz Winters, author of So, Stranger and Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing
Praise
The Surrender Theory
The Surrender Theory begins in the thick of heartbreak, gets lost in the vibrancy of new love, and eventually rediscovers itself in a place of peace and closure. It’s about learning to grow alongside grief. About taking the hand of your younger self and forgiving them. Through pages of truisms and poems, this debut collection from Caitlin Conlon explores the boundaries of our most poignant and human emotions. Deeply personal yet universal, The Surrender Theory speaks to anyone who has put their heart out into the world and hoped with everything in them that it would come home unscathed.
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“The Surrender Theory traverses the landscapes of love & grief with unwavering footsteps. These poems dive into vulnerability with their eyes wide open. I’m grateful to have spent time with this collection while navigating my own grief-broken heart. Thank you, Caitlin, for the reminder that it is worth it to live for the things we love.”
– Sabrina Benaim, author of Depression and Other Magic Tricks
“Conlon knows the essence of capturing an audience. Her signature voice is familiar and comforting, like she knows a part of you that even you have yet to discover. Anyone who has felt grief and complexity of the human experience will confide in Conlon’s work. She has the ability to see life through its clutter and she will show you that you can too.”
– Zane Frederick,
author of i am tired of being a dandelion