What critics say: “ With Wite Out, Linda Norton breaks fresh ground as an autobiographical poememoirist. Combining an exploration of her familial roots, an interrogation and critique of whiteness as lived experience, a diaristic account of relationships in all their complexity, and a personal, social, and cultural history of certain precincts in American poetry’s late 20th-century avant-garde, Wite Out is a masterpiece. ”
— John Keene
“Reading Wite Out also made me wonder where that missing letter went? What did it stand for and what was crouching in the lean-to of its variously broken loop? Horror? Responsibility? It’s just that how to take responsibility for horror has always seemed impossible because it means approaching the mass that assures annihilation. Whiteness is a black hole in this regard, but Linda Norton braves its event horizon, its point of no return, giving us leave to let go absolution to abolish, and fray the singularity to survive into some other dance we’ve been dancing, but denying, all along. In the proliferation of such release, we might hold on. ”
— Fred Moten
“Wite Out is a gorgeous book. Its spare, crystal-clear, non-confessional prose highlights feminine honesty rather than masculine concealment and makes you both sad and glad to be human. A memoir about a single working mother coping in a rough world she sees all too clearly, this is a courageous book about a courageous life; I couldn’t put it down.”
— Norman Fischer
About The Public Gardens: Poems and History, the prequel to Wite Out:
“The Public Gardens is a brilliant, wonderful book, a sort of a wild institution, intense and readable. Linda Norton looks at the world like a dog who likes to tear apart couches-repressed but not for long. Though full of shame, this book is shameless. A life is freely divulged as are the multitude of homeopathic bits from the author’s reading list. The overall experience of moving through The Public Gardens’s shuttling prose and poetry is quietly breathtaking. I have felt and learned much from this book! Her ‘Gardens’ are both organized and entirely disorderly-anything and anyone from any point in history might saunter through, and that’s the meaning of public, isn’t it? I find myself loving this writer’s mind, light touch, and generous heart and I, reader, didn’t want to go when it was done. My bowl is out. More! ”
— Eileen Myles
