Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows
"Everyone warns us off the rocks. / But what will keep us from the river?" Leigh asks in her debut collection, which pieces together a kind of mythology in which the surreal and celestial coexist with the realities of childhood abuse as an adult speaker grapples with its lasting emotional trauma. Rooted in a place of deep faith and bottomless compassion, Leigh's speaker struggles to remember, and to remind us all, "that to worship is to survive is to be / wholly human."
Publisher : Four Way Books (October 7, 2014)
Distributor : Chicago Distribution
Language : English
Paperback : 84 pages
ISBN-13 : 978-1935536499
"Built out of blood and awe, rooted in sorrow and radiant lyricism, these poems remind us that 'to survive is to be / wholly human.' Divine and earthly voices haunt these poems. God and parents singe the speaker's heart; angels and sisters redeem it. These poems are brilliant and brutal. But also instructive. They teach us to 'weld our wounds / to form tools.' This is a book of moving and startling epiphanies. I can't wait to teach it." — Eduardo C. Corral
"This book went through me like a blue lightning strike. Part lyric, part narrative, and always alive, unflinchingly alive. A wonderful book and an even more astonishing debut!" — Thomas Lux
"Whether furious psalm or impassioned testimony, the woman we meet in these poems is sharply aware that any kind of answer fragments into further questions. And she is committed to such undertakings. In Eugenia Leigh's moving debut collection, Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows, the reader is drawn into a childhood that is 'My father's voice full of boils' ... 'I offer God 1997' ... 'angel hunting' ... 'my mother's voice, / flapping in my blood: If you need to run, run' ... and daring to 'hate the dead.' Join her in this resolve." — Kimiko Hahn