The Bed Book masterfully calls out and talks back to grim truths and demonstrates why poetry is necessary and sought after in moments of reimagining where beauty might reside and need protecting. This collection fulfills its purpose as a valuable roadmap through the complex lineages of this oeuvre. Each compelling poem contains a world in miniature. Each bed is intense, dark, fertile, complicated, and wondrously overwhelming as they disintegrate into word portraits. Kimberly L. Becker makes poetry of searing scars and seething blood. Stunning and haunting language illuminates the ghosts of time and place with a vibrancy so visceral you can hear the pores of the skin, the chambers of the heart, the scream in the throat opening wider releasing truth and light.

Jaki Shelton Green, North Carolina Poet Laureate