Title: Brute: Poems
Writer: Emily Skaja
Publishing House: Graywolf Press
Date of Publication: April 2nd 2019
Rating: 5 stars
‘’I am sewn into a dress. On Broad Street, ravens
Lurk on the Divine Lorraine Hotel.’’
A striking front cover depiction Gleipnir and Fenrir by Walton Ford is a telling dark introduction to this poetry collection by Emily Skaja, the winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets.
A woman acquires multiple identities to overcome the pain of a broken relationship. She leaves the lover role behind and becomes a warrior and a witch, set to overcome violence, treason, expectations. She has to transform herself, to resist the vultures and the crows, the reminders of sexuality and death. Sleep paralysis, open wounds, cries, and silence.
‘’Soldier for a lost cause, brute,
mute woman
written out of my own story, I’ve
been trying
to cast a searchlight over swamp-
woods & parasitic ash
back to my beginning, that
girlhood-
kite-wisp clouded by gun salutes
& blackbirds
tearing out from under the
hickories
all these fine August morning so
temporary
so gold-ringed by heat maze &
where is that witch-girl
unafraid of anything, flea-
spangled little yard rat, runt
of no litter, queen, girl who
wouldn’t let a boy hit her,
girl refusing to be It in tag,
pulling that fox hide
heavy around her like a flag? Let
me look at her
Tell her on my honour, I will set
the wedding dress on fire
when I’m good & ready or she can
bury me in it.’’
‘’Brute Strength’’
Nice review! Graywolf publishes such interesting poetry.
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