“An astounding debut.”
—Adrienne Raphel, The New York Times
“Maggie Millner uses rhyme, confession, and surprising metaphor to create a fresh portrait of desire . . . Tremendously moving.”
—Kamran Javadizadeh, The New Yorker
“Restless, imaginative and daring, Couplets advances the canon of the erotic.”
—Kristen Millares Young, The Washington Post
“A balancing act of such sly virtuosity that it may give you vertigo.”
—Gregory Cowles, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
“Millner is brilliant at showing how early moments of lust can be existentially unmooring . . . Couplets is deft, delicate and unexpectedly fun.”
—Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian
“The rote labor of putting one thing into another—a dowel into a hole, a word into a line—can furnish a space of imperfect beauty (squeaky slats, slant rhymes) and improvised joy . . . Whoever masters these, Millner suggests, is worth a hundred screws and then a hundred more.”
—Anahid Nersessian, New York Review of Books
“Political and poetic considerations of storytelling—the pitfalls of narrativizing one’s own life and the lives of others—infuse this absorbing tale of falling out and in and out of love . . . Reading Millner’s poetry is as satisfying as submitting to a lover’s touch.”
—Ana Cecilia Alvarez, The Los Angeles Review of Books
“Maggie Millner’s Couplets . . . grapples confidently and tenderly with the uneasy parts of being alive and in love.”
—Isle McElroy, Vulture (Best Books of 2023)
“Copulative pleasures abound in this spectacular debut . . . Erudite but never overbearing, this is a remarkable achievement.”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"Millner uses one of art’s oldest forms to make anew one of art’s oldest subjects. Get it while it’s hot."
—Tomi Obaru, Buzzfeed
“Millner . . . offers a philosophy of sexuality as an expansive force: an organization of pleasure that refutes neoliberalism’s demand for incessant labor.”
—Heather Treseler, The Los Angeles Review of Books
“Couplets compelled me like a love affair—I didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to go to bed, didn’t want to get off the subway, I just wanted to hear the story it was telling, which was, ultimately, a story about form–what are the forms (of intimacy, vocation, domesticity, verse, pleasure) we want to be held by, and to break free from? I cannot remember the last time I was this gripped by a voice or its questions.”
—Leslie Jamison, author of Make It Scream, Make It Burn
“A dazzling, feather-light tour de force—witty and effervescent and insightful, and so sexy, and so real. I want a time machine so I can give this book to my Eugene Onegin-obsessed teenage self!”
—Elif Batuman, author of Either/Or
“In this riveting debut, Maggie Millner makes the rhyming couplet—that supposedly staid, outmoded vehicle of 18th century moralism—an engine of radical metamorphosis and scorching sex. Couplets plunges us into desire so fierce it overwrites existence, exiling us from the lives we know. This is an endlessly inventive, wise, exhilarating book.”
—Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness and What Belongs to You
“In her luminous, electric debut, Millner creates an original form to express the headlong revelations, obsessions, and erotic geometry of love. Couplets is propulsive, poignant, and terrific at showing the way carnality is tethered to vulnerability.”
—Dana Spiotta, author of Wayward
“Lovers of horny, rhyming poetry rejoice: Millner’s ‘love story in poems’ . . . has it all.”
—The Millions (Most Anticipated)
“Millner’s story-in-verse is a metafictive marvel . . . Rich and unexpected . . . a gorgeous lesson in form.”
—Barbara Egel, Booklist
“Millner’s story-in-verse—trying to classify this wonderfully amorphous book about the fluidity of desire is entirely beside the point—centers on a woman who falls in love with another woman for the first time, a relationship that upends her ideas of intimacy and herself.”
—Electric Literature (Most Anticipated)
“I want to throw this book across the room in rage at how good it is. Thrilling in its sincerity and intelligence, Couplets gives us everything: artistry, pathos, hilarity, style, and the sense (rare and wondrous) of a beautiful mind at work.”
—Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different
“Maggie Millner takes the stateliest of forms and feeds it to the flames of a consuming passion. Engined by rhyme, propelled by lust and hunger, Maggie Millner’s Couplets—effortlessly learned and endlessly sexy—is already an exquisite exemplar of my queer poetic canon.”
—Richie Hofmann, author of A Hundred Lovers
"A dazzling, virtuosic debut––and one of the best books I have read in a long time . . . This book has changed me."
—Aria Aber, author of Hard Damage
“A stunning debut, an instant classic . . . Sexy, sophisticated, surprising, propulsive, worldly, tender, formally masterful: who knew the nineteenth-century novel would find an astonishing critical efflorescence in poetry, in Brooklyn, in the twenty-first century?”
—Maureen N. McLane, author of More Anon