Bloodroot
- ISBN-10
- 1952411106
- ISBN-13
- 9781952411106
- Series
- Bloodroot
- Category
- Poetry
- Pages
- 66
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2020-06
- Publisher
- Luchador Press
- Author
- Carmel L. Morse
Description
Each poem in Carmel Morse's debut collection, Bloodroot, opens fully in the sun of memory. And just like the plant from which the book takes its name, each poem blooms with paradox: delicate and enduring; simply designed yet emotionally complex. Even though ghosts of grandmothers, mothers, wives, daughters, aunts, and sisters travel through dreams and darkness when the flowers close, and even though "I am a woman in an inkwell, drowning / because she did not answer me," Bloodroot pulls down strength from the sun and sinks it into its juiced-red roots. Morse doesn't obscure the shimmering details of pain, but names and wonders and challenges. In doing so, this sharp poet transforms memories of abuse and regret into art. -- Christine Stewart-Nuñez, South Dakota Poet Laureate and author of Bluewords Greening (Terrapin Books, 2016) In Bloodroot, Carmel Morse's poems capture the experiences and the people that have shaped her life. The poems are made of concrete words and images. They also have a deeper level that captures the emotional and spiritual depth at the root of the experiences. The first poem, "Onyx," is charged with striking images and it tells a story. The father rejects his child because it is a girl; however, he gives the narrator a beautiful necklace. Sixteen years later, when she prepares to deliver her second child, the father cannot accept that the baby is a girl. He leaves no gift and two years later he leaves for good. The narrator's life is so hard she almost sells the necklace, but she cannot. In order to remain strong, she "would unwrap the necklace/from the tissue paper/and fondle the stone." Here is Eliot's Objective Correlative written with striking force, forging the experience in the reader's mind. - Gary Pacernick, author of Memory and Fire: Ten American Jewish Poets (Peter Lang, 1989) Bloodroot, an apt title for this collection, delves deep through family and personal history to explore what is has meant, and continues to mean, to be an independent woman in America, even though "jagged threads shriveled/into cables of dried blood/and snapped off at the roots years ago." Carmel Morse's poems seek out "staples that attempt/to gather my...loose ends" and in so doing, she provides a full pantry. She exposes how American culture has held women "to a tent/of beauty as surface perfection", delving beneath that surface to find both flaws and inner beauty. Ultimately, this collection pays tribute to the human capacity, despite torment and tragedy, to survive and to nourish its bloodline and dance the Charleston at a granddaughter's birthday party. - Will Wells, author of Unsettled Accounts (Ohio University Press, 2010)
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Penguin's Poems for Life
By Laura Barber... Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, ... A Noiseless Patient Spider A noiseless patient spider, I mark'd where on a ...
-
Penguin's Poems by Heart
By Laura BarberAn anthology of some of the best English poems.
-
Scales of the Dragon
By James TimberlakeCombining journal entries, poetry and formal e-mails, these books celebrate the sights, sounds, flavors, (and the physical and mental strain), of crossing mountains, rolling landscapes, and unchanged rural villages, as well as vibrant ...
-
Upon This Stoney Holy Year
By James TimberlakeThere are no Formal E-mails, no Definitions, no Autobiography or Research here. And because of all that it is not, this book completes those first two in the pilgrimage series in a gentle way.
-
Heaven Is My Real Home: Volume 1
By Karen FreemanKaren Freeman! Was born August 22, 1950 in Newark New Jersey. She had a “BRIGHT” daughter named Kira. She Married Warren W. C. Freeman March 1, 1998. They were married for 13 years and 20 days. She “PASSED-ON” March 21, 2011.
-
Battle Dress: Poems
By Karen SkolfieldWinner of the Massachusetts Book Award "A terrific and sometimes terrifying collection—morally complex, rhythmic, tough-minded, and original." —Rosanna Warren, 2018 Barnard Women Poets Prize citation In a poetic voice at once accessible ...
-
Glossator 9: Pearl
By Karl Steel, David Coley, Daniel RemeinO. D. Macrae Gibson points out that the function of pyȝt as a concatenating word stresses its capacity to mean both arrayed and set.8 Gordon glosses the word as varying in sense throughout the poem between “set,” “fixed,” and “adorned” ...
-
The Truth
By Karen Michelle ThompsonThis riveting poetry collection is a fresh and witty account of thoughts and experiences that everyday people have in their day-to-day lives.
-
Heart on Fire
By Karen Teich ClusterSELL. IT. SOMEWHERE. ELSE. Well, you can take your good looks somewhere else Cuz they're not for sale 'round here... I've heard about you and the things you do And I don't need you anywhere near. Yeah, I've met your kind a time or two ...
-
Lerna, a Preclassical Site in the Argolid: Results of Excavations Conducted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens
By American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Jeremy B. Rutter, Elizabeth BanksI was indeed fortunate in being able to recruit a pair of talented , conscientious , and unfailingly cheerful draftsmen in the persons of Julie Baker and Kathi Donahue ( now Sherwood ) to collaborate with my wife , Sally , in producing ...