Description
Book SynopsisThis gorgeous and wry debut firmly claims physical strength, toughness, and authority for femininity. Ambalila Hemsell's poems speak from a place of empowerment as well as wonder. They address the insatiable fear of motherhood and the violence embedded in natural processes of creation, birth, and survival.
Trade ReviewThe work of an important new voice. These poems are transcendent and haunting. The breathtaking associative, spiritual, and psychological acrobatics in this poetry are not decorative or experimental or performative. The artistry here is a magician's. She changes us. A reader could ask no more of any collection of poems"" - Laura Kasischke, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry
""Hemsell gets it. She has written an incredible debut that anyone who plans to tend to our beloveds or our beloved earth in the coming days simply must read. This is the eco-poetics we need in the world. Don't let the beauty distract you from the call to action."" - Danez Smith, author of
Don't Call Us Dead ""At once a splendor of lyricism and a contemplative account of lineage, otherness, and ethnicity. Hemsell's extraordinary verbal deftness precisely locates the still-tender pains and triumphs of being a mother, a daughter, and a lover while still trying to be an individual in the world."" - Airea D. Matthews, author of
SimulacraTable of Contents
- joy 3
- I
- Son 7
- Passport 8
- Spirit Gulch 16
- Animating Principle 18
- History/Memory 20
- Alaska 27
- elegy for lilac 28
- Letter to the Dead 30
- Witness to a chain of bursting 31
- mourning 33
- the tooth 34
- Jigsaw 35
- The Neighborhood 39
- II
- the animals 43
- Sketching Finches 45
- winnowed 46
- Mule Poetica 48
- Young with Bad Wrists 50
- And Then 52
- The Wanting 54
- Think Global/Act Local 56
- Somerset 58
- Terra Machina 60
- Unearth 62
- III
- Queen of Hearts 67
- The Pardoner 68
- Eleven Ten 70
- Queen in Blue 71
- Libra Season ; 73
- The Gardener 74
- IV
- Rome 79
- Origin Story 80
- Glossary 82
- The Trouble with Sleeping 84
- For the Light 86
- yes, but 87
- poem with a bat in it 89
- Marsh Song 90
- Hour of Unbroken Eggs 91
- I'll Be Here 92
- Borrowed or Stolen, Like Children 93
- Prayer 95
- Some years later/after sex/you asked 96
- Night Song 97
- Cusp 101
- Notes 103
- Acknowledgments 105
