VALLEYSPEAK :: ZONE 3 PRESS :: FIRST BOOK AWARD :: NOVEMBER 2017
VALLEYSPEAK, tells the story of two kids growing up in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, surrounded by a culture of sex, violence, murder, earthquakes, floods, fires, mudslides, and hope.. A book of noir-inspired/-subverting poems tackling gender, whiteness, alcoholism and a childhood spent in the center of America's adult entertainment industry, VALLEYSPEAK walks the beat of SoCal's cataclysmic 90's -- the L.A. Uprising, the 1994 Earthquake, the flood, the mudslides, the fires, JonBenet Ramsey, Kato Kaelin and the O.J. Simpson low-speed car chase.. Everyone's a witness in VALLEYSPEAK, but only the poems are talking. Cover Art by Sammy Slabbink / Cover Design by David Bieloh 
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Advanced Praise for VALLEYSPEAK:
"Excellent poets build their own ecologies in which to work, and Cait Orcutt is an excellent poet. In Valleyspeak, she gives us Los Angeles as an entire ecosystem. The flora: lilies, fields of concrete, dry chunks of bark in a girl’s hand. The fauna: hummingbirds, insects with names like Consuelo, Miranda, and Rachel, and two sisters growing up in the middle of it all, fishing 'whole futures from stank / waters.' Orcutt has, with great generosity and formal precision, given us a map to this land of her making, to the home she’s (re)discovered there. Home—that’s the nucleus around which all these poems orbit. 'What a race / of pretending, // to think anyone gets away.'" —Kaveh Akbar
"VALLEYSPEAK is both exorcism and re-enchantment. It's also a collection of mesmerizing coming-of- age visions that emerge from the world of L.A. daughters, 'Sweet Valley / Ophelias, who haven't quite / drowned.' In this world of cars, swimming pools, porn, pills, and beautiful parents distracted by their own desires, Cait Orcutt unravels secrets of addiction and abandonment that are personal, familial, and cultural. A re-angler of the 'mind's film, ' she unravels and detoxifies the Valley's intoxicating spells as she magically re-makes them."--Mary Szybist
"LA, money, and addiction serve as the coordinates within which the 'girls' of these virtuosic poems harrowingly grow up, discovering their genealogical pasts and predilections, and setting a course for their bodies and minds that will, with luck, keep them alive to the richness of their own humanity. I love the feminism of this book and I am in awe of its craft. Cait Weiss Orcutt is a seeker and a seer, and her work is the intensely lyrical performance of a ruthless narrative investigation of self in all its nakedness, permutations, and personae. The poems in VALLEYSPEAK are made of incredible muscularity, musicality, humor, intellect, and courage, and to my mind rank among the most horrific personal trauma poems around."--Kathy Fagan Grandinetti
In this sharp and chilling collection, Cait Orcutt conjures up a California of poolside pinks and blues, where around the corner there’s always an earthquake of one sort of another: pills, predation, families snapped apart. Orcutt is shrewd and unsparing in her depictions of Los Angeles girlhood in the shadow of porn and pageantry, with the child playing 'the dictaphone Mom confesses in.' Does Grauman’s Chinese Theatre do book-prints? I ask because Valleyspeak should be right up there with the stars."—Natalie Shapero
"Cait Weiss Orcutt's VALLEYSPEAK takes place in the suburbs of 1990s Los Angeles, and in the sociopolitical chaos of that time and place: the Rodney King beating, the L.A.riots, the O.J. Simpson trial. VALLEYSPEAK follows a family of four in deftly crafted poems that privilege hard truths and take the narrative and formal risks required to reveal them. This collection--part tenderness, part bared teeth--is as much about growing up as it is about breaking down. It is peak and valley. VALLEYSPEAK is an electric debut."--Maggie Smith
"Excellent poets build their own ecologies in which to work, and Cait Orcutt is an excellent poet. In Valleyspeak, she gives us Los Angeles as an entire ecosystem. The flora: lilies, fields of concrete, dry chunks of bark in a girl’s hand. The fauna: hummingbirds, insects with names like Consuelo, Miranda, and Rachel, and two sisters growing up in the middle of it all, fishing 'whole futures from stank / waters.' Orcutt has, with great generosity and formal precision, given us a map to this land of her making, to the home she’s (re)discovered there. Home—that’s the nucleus around which all these poems orbit. 'What a race / of pretending, // to think anyone gets away.'" —Kaveh Akbar
"VALLEYSPEAK is both exorcism and re-enchantment. It's also a collection of mesmerizing coming-of- age visions that emerge from the world of L.A. daughters, 'Sweet Valley / Ophelias, who haven't quite / drowned.' In this world of cars, swimming pools, porn, pills, and beautiful parents distracted by their own desires, Cait Orcutt unravels secrets of addiction and abandonment that are personal, familial, and cultural. A re-angler of the 'mind's film, ' she unravels and detoxifies the Valley's intoxicating spells as she magically re-makes them."--Mary Szybist
"LA, money, and addiction serve as the coordinates within which the 'girls' of these virtuosic poems harrowingly grow up, discovering their genealogical pasts and predilections, and setting a course for their bodies and minds that will, with luck, keep them alive to the richness of their own humanity. I love the feminism of this book and I am in awe of its craft. Cait Weiss Orcutt is a seeker and a seer, and her work is the intensely lyrical performance of a ruthless narrative investigation of self in all its nakedness, permutations, and personae. The poems in VALLEYSPEAK are made of incredible muscularity, musicality, humor, intellect, and courage, and to my mind rank among the most horrific personal trauma poems around."--Kathy Fagan Grandinetti
In this sharp and chilling collection, Cait Orcutt conjures up a California of poolside pinks and blues, where around the corner there’s always an earthquake of one sort of another: pills, predation, families snapped apart. Orcutt is shrewd and unsparing in her depictions of Los Angeles girlhood in the shadow of porn and pageantry, with the child playing 'the dictaphone Mom confesses in.' Does Grauman’s Chinese Theatre do book-prints? I ask because Valleyspeak should be right up there with the stars."—Natalie Shapero
"Cait Weiss Orcutt's VALLEYSPEAK takes place in the suburbs of 1990s Los Angeles, and in the sociopolitical chaos of that time and place: the Rodney King beating, the L.A.riots, the O.J. Simpson trial. VALLEYSPEAK follows a family of four in deftly crafted poems that privilege hard truths and take the narrative and formal risks required to reveal them. This collection--part tenderness, part bared teeth--is as much about growing up as it is about breaking down. It is peak and valley. VALLEYSPEAK is an electric debut."--Maggie Smith
