Description
Book SynopsisIn
Blood Flower, passionate imagery married to music bursts from each line pushing out the boundaries of Uschuk's earlier poems. It continues themes in Uschuk's American Book Award winner,
Crazy Love. The poems braid the startling, sometimes brutal stories of her Russian/Czech immigrant family during the McCarthy Era in a conservative Michigan farming community with stories of courageous individuals, especially women, who persevere to love, despite it all. Uschuk's step-grandfather, father, brother, nephews, and first husband all suffered severe PTSD as combat veterans who returned home from wars that ravished not only their lives, but the lives of the women and children closest to them.
This is the history not just of one family but of immigrants in this nation. These poems, although set in landscapes across the globe, commonly draw their imagery and healing from the natural world, the wild world, and the integrity of the human heart.
Trade ReviewEvery syllable of
Blood Flower's warm and revelatory tapestry pulses with discovery—the unearthing of familial ties, the realization of strengths and frailties, the speaking of secrets out loud. The life story that springs from these lines is ultimately undaunted—but the real lessons lie in the journey." —Patricia Smith, author,
Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah"Dense with the colors of ancestral Russia and the American Southwest, the passionate, mindful poems in
Blood Flower oppose to loss and sorrow and the multitudinous depredations of history their meticulous tribute to the tangible world of nature and human love. To the unspeakable wreckage of war and the irreparable harm it visits upon father, brother, husband, these poems oppose a hard-won vision of healing and renewal. Even Chernobyl, abandoned by the species that poisoned it, has spawned new herds of buffalo. Divested of illusion and euphemism, these poems have no time for easy pessimism either. They are tribute to the world we must refuse to abandon." —Linda Gregerson, author,
The Selvage"Pamela Uschuk charges into our lives in a variety of forms that explore her background and its larger cultural implications for our world. If on the one hand she can find hope and solace in that past, however mysterious and half hidden, she is also aware of 'what breathes between the dawn death of stars' and leads us 'into black holes of longing.' Most poets would stop there, but Uschuk charges against that bleakness the way 'Defying extinction, cranes snap up blue crabs / in their anthracite beaks, then / roost in branches heaving reflected light.' It is that reflected light in this, her best book, that gives us faith to charge along with her." —Richard Jackson, author,
Heartwall and Out of Place
