
Winner of the 2024 Trio Award, Rooms for the Dead and the Not Yet explores landscapes of grief, desire, and identity. How does memory collapse time? In what ways do mourning and longing echo each other? What violence persists beneath narrative and aesthetic surfaces, upholding systems of belief and power? This debut poetry collection revolves around imagination as an act of resilience and rebellion. Blankenhorn's speaker communes with dead beloveds while buttering toast, petting dogs, kissing lovers, looking at art, holding hands with friends, and traversing cities and deserts. The beauty and comedy of daily life becomes a provocation into nonlinearity, sexuality, family history, and multiracial selfhood. Slipping between exterior and interior with an unflinching gaze, Rooms for the Dead and the Not Yet invites us to embrace the impossible complexity of human experience.
"'Anything can be a weapon, ' one poem's speaker warns, and indeed these powerful poems reveal how even the most commonplace objects and situations carry menacing histories."
-Paisley Rekdal, author of West: A Translation
"Rhoni Blankenhorn's Rooms for the Dead and the Not Yet exposes what it feels like to be both alive and haunted by one's aliveness at this particular moment in time."
- Jessica Q. Stark, author of Buffalo Girl
"From the Philippines to the Sonoran desert, from San Francisco to New York City, I imagine the poet and these poems holding hands - finding beloveds elsewhere and anywhere they go and return - all while teeming with attention and discernment."
- Janice Sapigao, author of like a solid to a shadow
"Rhoni Blankenhorn's Rooms for the Dead and the Not Yet masterfully hits the exact pitch of grief - at once a hush and a scream punctuated by unexpected laughter. Anyone who has suffered intimate loss will find a home in this unforgettable book."
- Eugenia Leigh, author of Bianca