Hound Triptych, Dani Janae

“…Come carrion beetle,

funk-driven, burrowing through decay

toward sweeter stink. What could be said?

You survive a fall from heaven to sit at the root.”

Hound Triptych, Dani Janae’s debut collection of poetry, is a raw exploration of the intricacies of being an adoptee, the accompanying grief, and the destruction and rebuilding of the self through girlhood and into womanhood. The collection is a candid journey through the emotional landscape of abandonment and the human need for belonging; this is poetry that reaches into your chest and tells your heart, Listen. Feel. The poems mix gritty darkness with captivating imagery—the continuity of the ouroboros, cyclical and ruinous, the mouth devouring its own body; hair as a living entity, its knots growing into mammals that speak; a daughter’s quiet, intrinsic love for her mother, “prized in the marrow, rich and pearlescent.” Coupled with a wider scrutiny of the capitalization of adoption, Janae provides a perspective both personal and wide. Hound Triptych is an experience in the richness of the lyrical and an invitation to gaze into the unfettered chaos of the psyche and the heart and sit with them, unflinching.

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In Hound Triptych, Dani Janae travels the ghostlands of abandonment and loss. She knows what very few of us know: I have held shooting stars in my hair since I was 10. These inventive, image-rich poems dive deep into the brutality of adoption where grief has a real face and birthmothers have none, where the “real” remains elusive, nameless.

—Jan Beatty, author of American Bastard

What is abandonment’s afterlife? Dani Janae’s debut collection Hound Triptych lyricises birth into a loveless world. Its voice sings of a lost birth mother, a violent caregiver, the inevitable imprint of self-harm.

I read this book angry for its voice, chanted along with it: “Nothing is fair about my lonely.” Janae’s generosity of narrative, line, and varied forms illuminate an ironic contrast: the pouring of love her voice confesses. She writes, “What we learn / from our mothers is how we want someone to touch / us.” By looking to animal life for both guidance and self-perception, she also tells a story of reaching toward containment, unlearning deprivation, and turning tenderness toward the self. An expansive, gorgeous debut, one I’ll be thinking about for a long time.

—K. Iver, author of Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco

Dani Janae’s Hound Triptych is ravenous with desire. Through rich, evocative lyric, Janae deftly navigates the treacherous terrain of adoptee loss and longing. Positioning the adoptee condition as that of a wild dog, Janae resists the confines of the cage and chronicles the path toward forgiveness—of the self and of one’s various mothers, in their presence and absence. This is a powerful debut from a shimmering new voice in adoptee poetry.

—Tiana Nobile, author of Cleave

Dani Janae’s Hound Triptych unfolds fiercely, like a mystery novella in verse. It’s a breathtaking pursuit in which women are complicated by razor sharp depictions and inexorable magical thinking. With inventive forms and piercing language, this intimate and unflinching book grapples with the heartbreak of a life lived and a mother imagined. It soars with a daughter’s mythologies and reinventions.  A magnificent debut.

—Yona Harvey, author of You Don’t Have To Go To Mars For Love