In SAVAGE FLOWER, winner of the 2019 St. Lawrence Book Award, Anna B. Sutton explores female oppression and agency in the Bible Belt South. The intertwined landscapes of Tennessee and North Carolina are the backdrop for Sutton’s beautiful, warring marriage of religion, family, the body, sex and reproductive rights, and the inevitable cycle of destruction and rebirth. In the tradition of the confessional poem, Sutton looks to her past in search of redemption, while always keeping an eye on the larger meaning. Timely, affecting, and fearless, there are no easy answers in Sutton’s imperfect world. As she says in the poem Center Hill, Even the most beautiful things are full / of our blood.