The Miraculous, Sometimes

Winner of a MIPA Silver Medal for Poetry. MIRACULOUS is undoubtedly a hybrid work, but always firmly grounded in poetics. Conceptually, the narration echoes the effects of trauma: sometimes the writing unfolds in long prose poems, while at other times, a single fragment may appear alone on the page. Occasionally, multiple commas splice the language, as fear interrupts the flow of speech. Structurally, these devices are united through a series of repeated images that function as through-lines, weaving the narrative’s various threads. For instance, birds frequently appear, the symbol, according to the ancient Greeks, of life continued, and a notion the narrator clings to: birds don’t die / only pass into the bodies of other birds. Like the faded balloon string the narrator finds on the street, the arrival of a bird bears a message that she needs–and needs enough to note–creating order within a landscape of grief, a system of meaning where life would otherwise be too frail.

Poetry.