So many great lines:

we must be // quiet to hear the universe

memory rips me / from the land

the suicide's blink

In Russian, there are two words for the verb / Die. One for animals, one for people.

The motel pool still and blue as a pill

In each scar, a story-- / pale comma of a slipped saw

There is clockwork to a fire

Where the walls seem to luff in the wind

On TV, people are playing a game, / clapping when the holes in the world are named

Nebraska talked in its sleep

sophie klahr has created a mesmerizing collection of meditations on driving through american flyover country, the shared shape of humans and nature, and living on and within the land. her imagery of birds, plants and the natural world was really beautiful and i think the strongest aspect of this collection. the prose is sensual in its descriptions of human/animal bodies and desires. she briefly touches on the religion and politics of the landscapes to mixed success; the commentary on this is minimal. in addition, some of the text here is a little vacuous, pieces of sentences strung together without much thought for the end result.

i appreciated this prose-poem perspective on oft-lost and forgotten rural landscapes but i don't think this one will stick with me for the long term.

Two Open Doors in a Field is a fine work, however, not too memorable. Sophie Klahr is obviously very talented, but this collection seems to be missing something. While this work was not for me, I am sure it will stick for someone else-- particularly those with an affliction for travel and road trips.

Would love to see how the poet's craft develops in future works.

3 out of 5 stars

I really like some poems from this collection and really didn't care for others. I enjoyed the first third of this poetry collection the most though so about halfway through this did drag a bit for me. The formatting I personally enjoyed but I know some people might be annoyed by it. My favorite poem was "driving through Oregon, listening to the radio" and my favorite bit was the last half: "...This violence makes us feel at home together, these miles 'til Bend, a needle threading blue within the tall pines- a stitched horizon. The disappearing hem of sky. Trauma is never clean. Thunder begins. Then snow. The story lost to static in the woods.". This is a poetry book I would consider adding to my physical collection but it's not one I am saving the publishing date for personally.

Disclaimer: I received a digital arc copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

A lovely collection of travel poems documenting Klahr's long drives from 2015 to 2018. This collection boasts both longform and shortform poetry/prose which breaks up the flow in a fresh way. I'm personally a fan of the sonnets. While I usually will go feral over rich and abundant metaphor, some of the reading gets bogged down in the flowery imagery. The continuous use of the radio gives the collection a sort of soundtrack which I find charming and find it helps connect the readers to the experiences Klahr writes about.

My favorite poems are: "Parked, Nebraska", "Parked, Utah", and "Pass With Care."

This forthcoming poetry collection traverses American roads, in some ways revising Kerouac from a queer woman’s vantage point. In sonnets that are so fluid that I often forgot they were sonnets, Klahr thinks about solitude and relationships on open, interior roads. She listens to the radio, contemplates separation, masculinity and her father, Christianity and whiteness. There’s a special love here for Nebraska, which she returns to again and again. The most common action verb was “driving,” but the most common activity, really, was thinking. This is a lovely entry to the canon of American road literature.

Thank You Netgalley and the publishers for sending me and allowing me to read this E-ARC.
This was fine but I've definitely read better.

This was different that I expected. I appreciated the combination of a road trip and poetry (!) but the verses themselves felt quite depressing and I gave up on the book before I got very far…

Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read/review this book

Liked:
I do like the beautiful imagery and some of the metaphors and the feeling of nostalgia, as well as the home-y vibe it had. I also liked the concept of the road trips and the radio.

Disliked:
For the most part, I didn't feel anything reading the passages which really affected my mood over the book but I did highlight lines that were beautiful. It wasn't anything that resonated with me and some I didn't understand completely. So overall the biggest dislike for me that stood out was not feeling moved by most or all of the passages.

Favorite lines:
"When you said it will always be uneven between us, I heard a new word for a field impossible to measure"

"Love is short , forgetting is so long."

"I told him: This was once a sea. As were you, he said."

"Everything dies and that's how it should be, isn't it? Too early gone, or too long suffering—it's what we claim loss to be, but even loss is the wrong word. For what is there, is and what is not, we still live with."

Overall Thoughts:
I usually love poetry books and I really did want to like this since the poems do give off a home-y vibe, but this wasn't for me. It did have a few great passages and some really beautiful lines, but that was really it, since it wasn't anything magnificent.

Recommendation:
I dislike not being able to recommend a book to anyone as I do believe that some could love this book so if you like the summary you could give it go, but personally speaking, it feels like a book that you can pass.

3.5/5

I enjoyed reading this, and I loved the format of the different trips and radio stations. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Alice isn’t dead. However, aside from a few of the poems, I didn’t really feel anything one way or another about the poems.

A quiet journey through various landscapes and emotions. Unfortunately I didn't feel truly moved by any of the poems. They weren't difficult to understand, but their general message went over my head. I underlined a few passages, some beautiful phrases, but that's it.

An introspective, cathartic book of poetry that challenges the reader to examine their life in the minutia. I loved this.

Fine, but nothing to write home about. Sophie Klahr's collection of poetry Two Open Doors in a Field begins with an interesting concept--vignettes based on moments in the car wherein Klahr finds relevance in her larger life journey. I picked up this book because its description described connection to music and to her home state, Nebraska, a place I can't say I read too much poetry about. As such, Klahr's first two poems, which touched on both of these themes, were the best works from the bunch. Some solid imagery interspersed throughout the remaining sixty pages, but I would recommend sitting this one out. There is just not much in the way of original thought or imagery.