- Finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in Poetry
- Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for lesbian poetry
- One of The Atlantic's 10 best books of 2023
- On some nice 2023 roundups @ Electric Literature, New York Magazine, Vulture, Poetry Society, & Vogue
- Additional coverage in The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Paris Review, The New York Times editors' choice list, New York Review of Books, Los Angeles Review of Books (twice—cool!), McSweeney's, Poetry, New York Mag, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Esquire, ELLE, Buzzfeed, Lit Hub, Cleveland Review of Books, BOMB, Interview Mag, The San Diego Tribune, Poets & Writers, Oxford Review of Books, London Magazine, The Academy of American Poets, Document, The Creative Independent, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, The Millions, Lambda Literary Review, Gay Times, Publishers Weekly (starred review), Booklist, & elsewhere
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“I deeply adore this shattering, sexy, funny book.” – Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desperation
“Totally compelling and brilliant. I couldn’t put it down.” – Cecilia Knapp, author of Peach Pig