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The fourteen stories in Every Human Love redefine our sense of
reality. Set seemingly in the quotidian, these tales veer into the
unexpected, the uncomfortable, occasionally the eerie, thrusting
characters in crisis into still greater quandaries, where the world
of weddings and work, of frustrated hopes and mundane
dissatisfactions, collides with a realm of legend, of fairy tale,
of nightmare.
The precise gaze and chiseled language of the poems in Oldest
Mortal Myth authoritatively convey a broad and deep knowledge.
Whether a reimagining a Greek myth in order to infuse it with a
contemporary pain, extending empathy and humorous Mitmenschkeit to
both denizens and voyeurs of the world's freakshows, or describing
with wit and experience the spiritual affects of medical
conditions, the book is infused with restrained but piercing
emotion, a subtle metrical ear, and enough daring and wit to write
in rhymed couplets to take the obvious, easy way. For instance,
with the last line of “De Wallen, Amsterdam”: “The moon above
the spires, a sexless disk,/eyes us coolly as an odalisque.” I so
admire the refusal to make that last line scan as a perfect iambic
pentameter line. It would be so easy; all you’d have to do is add
the grammatical, but colloquial, “as.” Which would have ruined
the line, and the poem. Oh, and the rhymes in the canzone!
There’s much to admire here, much to enjoy. —Marilyn Nelson
Poised on the precipice of mystery and longing, each character in
Now You Know It All also hovers on the brink of discovery - and
decision. Set in small-town North Carolina, or featuring eager
Southerners venturing afar, these stories capture the crucial
moment of irrevocable change. A young waitress accepts an offer
from a beguiling stranger; a troubled boy attempts to unleash the
villain from an internet hoax on his party guests; a smitten
student finds more than she bargained for in her favorite
teacher’s attic; two adult sisters reconvene to uncover a family
secret hidden in plain sight. With a sharp eye for rendering inner
life, Joanna Pearson has a knack for creating both compassion and a
looming sense of threat. Her stories peel back the layers of the
narratives we tell ourselves in an attempt to understand the world,
revealing that the ghosts haunting us are often the very shadows
that we cast.
The precise gaze and chiseled language of the poems in Oldest
Mortal Myth authoritatively convey a broad and deep knowledge.
Whether a reimagining a Greek myth in order to infuse it with a
contemporary pain, extending empathy and humorous Mitmenschkeit to
both denizens and voyeurs of the world's freakshows, or describing
with wit and experience the spiritual affects of medical
conditions, the book is infused with restrained but piercing
emotion, a subtle metrical ear, and enough daring and wit to write
in rhymed couplets to take the obvious, easy way. For instance,
with the last line of “De Wallen, Amsterdam”: “The moon above
the spires, a sexless disk,/eyes us coolly as an odalisque.” I so
admire the refusal to make that last line scan as a perfect iambic
pentameter line. It would be so easy; all you’d have to do is add
the grammatical, but colloquial, “as.” Which would have ruined
the line, and the poem. Oh, and the rhymes in the canzone!
There’s much to admire here, much to enjoy. —Marilyn Nelson
Winner of the Drue Heinz for Literature. Poised on the precipice of
mystery and longing, each character in Now You Know It All is on
the brink of discovery - and decision. Set in small-town North
Carolina, or featuring eager Southerners venturing afar, these
stories capture that crucial moment when someone's path changes
irrevocably.
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