Girl Paper Stone

Poetry. Women’s Studies. In her luminous book, Laurie Filipelli remakes the constellations of a modern life. Her poems re-draw the lines between the parts of the world, helping us to see there are no divisions between planting a plumbago and watching the passage of hateful legislation, no space between grief for a lost father and the wonder of what he’s told the speaker: ‘the whale’s veins are so wide we could swim / to her heart.’ By looking so tenderly and incisively at the actual experience of a life, Filipelli makes us see our own differently.–Sasha West

Flying together, flying apart: in these poems the self is as elastic as a flock of birds cutting across the winter sky. Here, among carousel and cave, where ‘the bigger you spin, the lighter you fall, ’ we are invited into the world of mothers and daughters, fathers and grandfathers, a geography whose inhabitants bear steadily forward while always casting a long look back. As our leader advances, in an outstretched hand she presents to us the artifacts of her explorations–mirrors, keys, paper dragons–reminding us all the while to accept the dangers of discovery as well as its myriad blessings. The wisdom within these pages is hard-won and generously offered, the speaker lifting her face skyward no matter the conditions at her feet. ‘The future is a ballad sung in your name, ’ Filipelli promises, and we want to–we do–believe her.–Laurie Saurborn