Buy new:
$18.00
FREE delivery Wednesday, May 15 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Ships from: Amazon.com
Sold by: Amazon.com
$18.00
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns
FREE delivery Wednesday, May 15 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35. Order within 3 hrs 39 mins
Only 9 left in stock (more on the way).
$$18.00 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$18.00
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Amazon.com
Ships from
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Returns
30-day easy returns
30-day easy returns
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Returns
30-day easy returns
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Payment
Secure transaction
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
$15.93
Readable copy. Pages may have considerable notes/highlighting. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less Readable copy. Pages may have considerable notes/highlighting. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less See less
FREE delivery May 17 - 23. Details
Or fastest delivery May 13 - 15. Details
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
$$18.00 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$18.00
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Ships from and sold by ThriftBooks-Phoenix.
Amazon book clubs early access
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Explore Amazon Book Clubs
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Jill Mceldowney
+ Follow
More books from this author
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Otherlight Paperback – August 15, 2023

by Jill McEldowney (Author)
5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 1 rating
See all formats and editions
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$18.00","priceAmount":18.00,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"18","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"00","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"DCgPi4yQNGn2kgXhtpTyrtNUfBP17aP%2BV7Z5F2l6sxWvOSQ7T9R7r4Td1%2F%2FBrTyHIDCLIPX2dlKcIpofM6KR9O5ax2aEtM9X8f%2BIQDE7tfMK7OPIm1A8%2Blaaoo%2BrmF234k%2Fi1acIKB4EfSXaWWDwkA%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$15.93","priceAmount":15.93,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"15","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"93","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"DCgPi4yQNGn2kgXhtpTyrtNUfBP17aP%2B0pi68pL3GIrFOv9zLoVfj73kvKN%2BbtsRVjcQRuVw47KFeiFIUU8saRzlkfnn3Ubrk3kRIBZeil7pk11T91nWV2PUD2xr5HBW%2BVpHqFHesktPgfK%2BhUG0bh6CT%2FsOeZ%2FPDrSnz2cDg4IDGFNa43TUqFAhZhwuY0%2B5","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

Jill Mceldowney's Otherlight plunges us into the rarefied limbo of grief. Suspended in time, in action, in ice, its speaker is halfway out the door of this world-is half-turned to follow the beloved who hovers, conjured, just at the edges of these pages. Otherlight's iconoclasm is arresting and terrifying; it rejects the advances of a world that refuses to understand that sometimes the past is a mine we never want to be hauled from. In these lyrical, annihilating poems, Mceldowney shows us how a life can be utterly derailed by a death; how even after a lightning-struck past, choosing to stay alive can be the biggest risk of all.

-Claire Wahmanholm, author of Meltwater and Wilder


Otherlight beams its lantern light from the mouth of a cavernous grief. As we descend, Jill Mceldowney guides us through a liminal space only the loss of a beloved can forge, a world where the past and future continually collapse and distort, a purgatory of questions, a guilt that is '-terrible to survive / and surviving is never over.' These poems are raw as an exposed nerve in their exploration of addiction and precise in their portrayal of the jagged contours of depression: 'I pretend like I'm living.' There are 'rivers that children wade into / and do not return from as children, ' insomniac nights that stretch into endless days. But this collection is also proof that there is power in naming the beast, even if it can't be tamed, even if its teeth are still bared." -Ruth Awad, author of Set to Music a Wildfire



Read more Read less
Previous page
  1. Print length
    98 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    YesYes Books
  4. Publication date
    August 15, 2023
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 0.2 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1936919958
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1936919956
  8. See all details
Next page
All the Little Raindrops: A Novel
"All the Little Raindrops: A Novel" by Mia Sheridan for $10.39
The chilling story of the abduction of two teenagers, their escape, and the dark secrets that, years later, bring them back to the scene of the crime. | Learn more

Editorial Reviews

Review

The poems in Otherlight are not afraid to ask "what's the worst thing that could happen?"as they take the reader to that very place. Jill Mceldowney's collection tells the story of love, loss, addiction, and the nonlinear path of survival. It's an account of witness and culpability, what happens to those left grieving: "I sit here perpetually/inventing lives more terrifying to live-/as if reality were not enough." The poems do not shy away from the ugly, but rather declare it. Otherlight weaves dream, confession, and psychopharmacology notes as a method to grasp what remains. And what remains is the ache and beauty of memory: "Apocalypse doesn't mean end/ it means future/brighter than where we are now."

-Diannely Antigua, author of Ugly Music


Jill Mceldowney's Otherlight holds the fractured syllables and images of grief the way a hand might hold a broken glass-without trying to reassemble the pieces, but instead letting the shards glisten until they become their own beautiful and terrifying language. Through unfurling ephemera and dialects of memory, Mceldowney creates a voice steeped in longing, a collage of utterances and collapse, that when pushed to the point of breaking, push even further into the reaches of elegy, where we might not find comfort, but something more real and resilient: a reckless fearlessness and unapologetic vulnerability. "I hope where you are is vast, real/ impossible-/a better oblivion, / more sky-/ I hope where you are is nothing/ like home."

-Kendra DeColo, author of I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World



About the Author

JILL MCELDOWNEY is the author of Otherlight (YesYes Books, 2023) and the chapbook Airs Above Ground (Finishing Line Press, 2019). She is an editor and founder of Madhouse Press. Her previously published work can be found in journals such as Prairie Schooner, Muzzle, Vinyl, and other notable publications.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ YesYes Books (August 15, 2023)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 98 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1936919958
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1936919956
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.5 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.2 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 1 rating

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Jill Mceldowney

Jill Mceldowney

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

JILL MCELDOWNEY is the author of Otherlight (YesYes Books, 2023) and the chapbook Airs Above Ground (Finishing Line Press, 2019). She is an editor and founder of Madhouse Press. Her previously published work can be found in journals such as Prairie Schooner, Muzzle, Vinyl, and other notable publications.

Customer reviews

5 out of 5 stars
5 out of 5
1 global rating

Top review from the United States

Lauren Fields
5.0 out of 5 stars Vast Yet Intimate Stories of Self-Treatment
Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2023
Jill Mceldowney’s Otherlight contains vast yet intimate stories of self-treatment.
•
There are drugs of overdose, and drugs to stabilize turbulent moods. There are lingering habits from defunct relationships that need to be broken, but those same behaviors pull one into the comforting embrace of familiar roles. There is grief over lost life that all the therapy in the world won’t banish — self-indulgent mourning clings until the person it hurts works out a solitary deal to let it go.
•
The design of the words gives an atmosphere of flight through ozone, of limbo, and the stark inward negotiations people must undertake to make peace with what cannot be undone.
Helpful
 Report