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Description
The work of the poet is to bear witness and tell truths, to report and document the beautiful and the strange, the twisted and the sweet. Because this is the work, being a poet means coming to terms with the joys and burden of saying, "I am here. This is the story." Sometimes that work comes at expense of comfort and sometimes it comes at the expense of the pained expectation to remain silent, to tow the line. In this raw, wondrous, and heartbreaking debut, Kathryn Leland's body is given in full to the work, and that body is hammered into wood, into bedroom doors slammed shut, into dented car hoods, into a garden of bruised soil purpling to blooms of Aster and Dahlia. These are not flowers of melodrama. This garden is the reality of wreckage, the salvaged self of a girl becoming a woman. This is Leland learning if she can make a body for herself, "they can burn it, tear it, throw it away," but through the work there comes the toughened spirit of a poet and the resolve to say, no matter what, "This happened."
-Bryan Borland & Seth Pennington (Sibling Rivalry Press)
The work of the poet is to bear witness and tell truths, to report and document the beautiful and the strange, the twisted and the sweet. Because this is the work, being a poet means coming to terms with the joys and burden of saying, "I am here. This is the story." Sometimes that work comes at expense of comfort and sometimes it comes at the expense of the pained expectation to remain silent, to tow the line. In this raw, wondrous, and heartbreaking debut, Kathryn Leland's body is given in full to the work, and that body is hammered into wood, into bedroom doors slammed shut, into dented car hoods, into a garden of bruised soil purpling to blooms of Aster and Dahlia. These are not flowers of melodrama. This garden is the reality of wreckage, the salvaged self of a girl becoming a woman. This is Leland learning if she can make a body for herself, "they can burn it, tear it, throw it away," but through the work there comes the toughened spirit of a poet and the resolve to say, no matter what, "This happened."
-Bryan Borland & Seth Pennington (Sibling Rivalry Press)
Reviews