Light Under Skin (Finishing Line Press, 2006)
"Conventional mind-body dualism has no place in Amanda Auchter’s Light Under Skin, and this is the great allure of the book. The mind keeps itself alive in our skins; our bones are the very girders that support self-consciousness; the body is at once translucent and “heavy with words.” Even in sleep, we are weighted by the physicality of memory and experience -- “the silent stirrings // of our slumber & nightmares.” —Tony Trigilio, Poetry West
The Glass Crib (Zone 3 Press, 2011). Buy it here. winner of the Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry
The journey to and out of The Glass Crib is a heart-breaking one with moments of revelation and gravity that will take the reader’s breath away. But this book will also be remembered for its countless lines of breath-taking beauty. Auchter shows enviable precision in orchestrating image and music—each poem a perfect sensory song. . . The Glass Crib heralds the arrival of a poet with the courage and the craft to write about the destruction and restoration of “the dissolving body” and its spirit, “the scattered seeds.” This is poetry borne out of perseverance, not self-pity, and shaped by a clarity of vision, not by an outraged perspective. To read Amanda Auchter is to experience healing, joy, celebration, and above all, surprise."
— Rigoberto González
— Rigoberto González
“Like all Genesis myths, “before the naming, . . .there was the dark that held you.” In The Glass Crib, Amanda Auchter offers her own creation myth, which gathers force to become a myth of becoming, in all its forms. Auchter is a poet of restless intelligence and deep music—it is a pleasure to hold this book in my hands.” —Nick Flynn
"There is a quiet, lyrical density in Amanda Auchter's The Glass Crib. "The small voice inside mine" both remembers and "unremembers." The poems are bold and exacting and are themselves "a seed's white push." I am often stopped by set moments and phrasings in these poems, and despite the emotional facts of so many of the poems, I rest there, among various phrases, and feel language doing its, often strangely, quiet part. As "the Godlight burned" so burns these poems." —Michael Burkard
"Rendered with acute beauty, tenderness and measured dignity of expression, Amanda Auchter’s debut collection breathes life into her speakers and themes: a woman in a coma, biblical figures, the divine and the earthly, an unborn child, being and nothingness, a daughter given up for adoption, the body and the soul, a hung-over unwed mother. These poems radiate insistent light, pure lyric courage and unflagging compassion." —Amy Gerstler
"Auchter presents us with the delicacy and hopefulness that are present with pregnancy, birth, babies, and young children, and the terror and tragedy that can accompany the birth and or death of a young child. This book is about sorrow, pain, loss, and ascension. . . In the poems in Amanda Auchter‘s The Glass Crib, your mind will be moved as well as your heart, soul, and spirit, and what else could you want from poems?” --Tom Holmes
"There is a quiet, lyrical density in Amanda Auchter's The Glass Crib. "The small voice inside mine" both remembers and "unremembers." The poems are bold and exacting and are themselves "a seed's white push." I am often stopped by set moments and phrasings in these poems, and despite the emotional facts of so many of the poems, I rest there, among various phrases, and feel language doing its, often strangely, quiet part. As "the Godlight burned" so burns these poems." —Michael Burkard
"Rendered with acute beauty, tenderness and measured dignity of expression, Amanda Auchter’s debut collection breathes life into her speakers and themes: a woman in a coma, biblical figures, the divine and the earthly, an unborn child, being and nothingness, a daughter given up for adoption, the body and the soul, a hung-over unwed mother. These poems radiate insistent light, pure lyric courage and unflagging compassion." —Amy Gerstler
"Auchter presents us with the delicacy and hopefulness that are present with pregnancy, birth, babies, and young children, and the terror and tragedy that can accompany the birth and or death of a young child. This book is about sorrow, pain, loss, and ascension. . . In the poems in Amanda Auchter‘s The Glass Crib, your mind will be moved as well as your heart, soul, and spirit, and what else could you want from poems?” --Tom Holmes
