Description
Book SynopsisThe poems in
Radium Girl hold dual citizenship in the land of the sick and the kingdom of the well. The point where illusion ends and reality begins is never clear, as Celeste Lipkes evokes saints, magicians, scientists, and caregivers in the process of surviving both medical illness and medical training.
Trade ReviewIn the breathtaking ‘escape room’ of Celeste Lipkes’s
Radium Girl, our ardent guide dons, by turns, the snow-flaked robe of patient, the white coat of physician, the lustrous cape of magician. The word ‘magic’ is rooted in the PIE ‘
magh to be able, to have power and in this radiant debut, body and mystery exchange their secrets about what can and cannot be controlled in illness, in love, and in the salvific art of poetry itself." - Lisa Russ Spaar, author of
Madrigalia: New & Selected Poems and
Paradise Close: A Novel"Celeste Lipkes, poet and clinical psychiatrist, is Dr. Oliver Sacks and Stevie Smith rolled into one. With perspicacity, her luminous first book meditates on many odd juxtapositions including Houdini and medical school, Crohn’s disease and love. Dividing her idiosyncratic lyrics into four sections Rabbit, Dove, Hemicorporectomy, and Escape
Radium Girl brings us close to a young speaker under pressure to honor the Hippocratic oath and make her way in the world. Annie Dillard said poets to be poets should study something else. Lipkes did, to great success: by the last page, her poetry radiates with talent, acuity, and originality." - Spencer Reece, author of
The Clerk’s Tale and
The Secret Gospel of Mark: A Poet’s MemoirTable of ContentsRabbit
sonnet
mel·lif·er·ous
Moon Face
Anatomy Lab
Eve Miscarries
Dove
ne·pen·thes
Instructions for My Lover
La Brea Tar Pits
cousin
A Kite Addresses Benjamin Franklin
Hemicorporectomy
a pair of impossible objects
cam·pa·nol·o·gy
Hospital through a Teleidoscope
Snail
Escape
infusion room praise song
al·bes·cent
two small fish
Alphekka
Acknowledgments
Notes
