The Ocean in the Next Room

Poems

Sarah V. Schweig

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English

Milkweed Editions
23 April 2025

Poetry by individual poets

Winner of the Jake Adam York Prize, this collection of poems seeks answers about how to live meaningfully in a world saturated by late capitalism.

""The question isn't / what exists,"" writes Sarah V. Schweig in her engrossing and prize-winning collection, ""The question is what doesn't / die with us?"" Positioned from within the morass of modern-day living, The Ocean in the Next Room searches for the hard, abiding particles of truth buried beneath our frenzied consumer culture. Stillness. Sunsets. The circadian rhythm of trees. These poems guide us to look past branding, content-creation, and relentless jargon to find meaning in those layers of the world that operate without human intervention.

In verse that is at once inventive and innately familiar, Schweig unpacks the urge to make art, life, and connections even at the risk of becoming further entangled in the Anthropocene. Profound and clear-sighted, this collection urges us to lift our gazes from our screens and really look at the world around us. If we measure our attentions and sharpen our intentions, if we ""try again to write / the true things,"" we might spy something real on the horizon.

By: Sarah V. Schweig
Imprint: Milkweed Editions
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 215mm, Width: 139mm,
ISBN: 9781571315632
ISBN 10: 1571315632
Pages: 96
Publication Date: 23 April 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

1. Toward the Great Unity 1 The Tower 3 Poem on My Birthday 8 Tractatus 10 2. Five Skeins 19 Meanwhile in our City of Abandon 24 Contingencies (III) 27 Theory of Ash 29 3. Unaccompanied Human Voice 32 Waves 63 The Blue House 70 Longest Night 71 Notes 73 Acknowledgments 75

Sarah V. Schweig's poetry has appeared inBoston Review,Granta,Tin House,andtheYale Review, and her critical essays have appeared inPublic Seminar, and Tourniquet Review. Her first book,Take Nothing with You,Maine with her husband and son.

Reviews for The Ocean in the Next Room: Poems

Praise for The Ocean in the Next Room “This extraordinary collection of poems does that strange thing Hegel tells us all great art does: in his lectures on aesthetics Hegel tells us that art makes appear the structures that would otherwise remain invisible to us. Through a series of interconnected pieces this collection works through and brings to light the complexities of life lived in the twenty-first century.”—Cynthia Cruz, author of Hotel Oblivion