GRIEFCAKE — Catherine Weiss
In GRIEFCAKE, Catherine Weiss carries you into a future of space exploration and pro-wrestling. This second full-length collection explores faith, death, body, queerness, marriage, and blockbuster movies. These meticulously crafted poems are clever, heartbreaking, and brimming with hard-fought hope.
Praise for GRIEFCAKE
"Between pro wrestling matches, misheard Bob Seger lyrics, and trying to make friends with The Concept of Death, Griefcake is an ambitious book about what it is to be alive in the bodies we’re given. These poems are charged with fury and wit, and they’re delivered with an electric voice so compelling that when Catherine Weiss writes “Tiptoe into future grief with me,” you will gladly follow."
—MATTHEW OLZMANN, author of Constellation Route
"Griefcake is a living and breathing ode to those gone before us. To the practicalities of staying alive—the sweetness of a moldy cookie, a shared bottle of wine, the richness of the things we need. An ode in waiting to the perseverance of memory in the face of one’s fear of death, how close we always are to death and (the) dying. It considers that what constitutes “enough” must exist beyond pure survival. Because the body must be what the body must be."
—TAYLOR STEELE, author of Drowning in Light
"While diving into serious and existentially anxious questions about how to approach life and death, Weiss manages to bypass pretension completely and instead find opportunities for joy, humor, and surreal creativity. Many of these forthright poems glimmer with a dogged persistence around leaning into life. Or as Weiss puts it, “I can’t stand myself alone. But I would like to keep on going.”
—MEGAN McDERMOTT, author of Woman as Communion
"Catherine Weiss writes with a wit that both twinkles and devastates—often at the same time. Guiding us through hospital rooms and haunted houses, drive-thrus and beaches, wrestling matches and Mars, Griefcake is a journey, a brilliant unbraiding of what remains after loss."
—LYD HAVENS, author of Chokecherry
About the Author
Catherine Weiss is a poet and artist from Maine. Their poetry has been published in Tinderbox, Up the Staircase, Fugue, Okay Donkey, perhappened, Birdcoat, Bodega, Counterclock, petrichor, Hobart After Dark, and Flypaper Lit. Catherine is the artist behind the collaborative poetry chapbook/card deck I WISH I WASN’T ROYALTY (Game Over Books, 2020). They are the author of chapbook-length poem, FERVOR (Ginger Bug Press, 2021) and full-length poetry collection, WOLF GIRLS VS. HORSE GIRLS (Game Over Books, 2021). More at catherineweiss.com.
