Today's poem is "Flake"
from Crown of Wild
Erica Bodwell
is a poet and attorney who lives in Concord, New Hampshire. Her full-length manuscript, Crown of Wild, was a finalist for the 2018 Four Way Books Larry Levis Prize and won the Two Sylvias Press 2018 Wilder Prize. It was released in September 2020. Her chapbook, Up Liberty Street, was released in March 2017 by Finishing Line Press. Her poems have been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes and have appeared in Spoon River Review (Editor's Prize 2nd Runner Up), Beloit, North American Review (James Hearst Poetry Prize finalist), PANK and other journals.
Books by Erica Bodwell:
Other poems on the web by Erica Bodwell:
"Aubade in Which Grace Appears"
"Authentic Presence"
"All the Stories I Ever Told Myself"
"Poem for Kayla Mueller"
"Cadet"
Erica Bodwell's Website.
Erica Bodwell on Twitter.
About Crown of Wild:
"'What is the sound of in ruins, broken?' In Erica Bodwell's striking debut, brokenness is inflected with pain and also with beauty. Bodwell knows how humans get damaged and do damage, and sticks close to the stressed and womanly body: its sensations, its pressures, what impinges on it, how it breaks freeor how it can't. Her sounds are dense and vivid, her characters in these formally-varied lyric narratives are as real as characters in short stories. This is a book I'll keep coming back to."
"In Erica Bodwell's Crown of Wild, there are many kinds of wildness. There is the wildness, for instance, found in a young woman's coming of age, her discovery of both desires and betrayals along the way. There is also the ugly wildness of the pervasive violence against women, especially sexual violence, within the family and in the world beyond. But there is another kind of wildness at work within all these poems. At every turn, this poet sizes up her world for both its menace and its occasional but fleeting beauty. With razor-sharp diction and stunningly original associations, Bodwell's poems show us that becoming a whole person does not happen by accident. It requires courage, resilience, and, in this case, an unflinching intelligence. These strengths bring the poet to what she calls her own 'bright freedom.' Such freedom is an authentic and durable 'crown of wild,' and this book is its story."
"Can a book of poetry be sexy and sad at the same time? It can if its speaker is inquisitive enough. If she's wide-ranging and empathetic and forgiving and observant enough. This book of American womanhood rises out of a sensually-grounded tension between 'wildish things' like our speaker's 'tresses [like a] nest of milky way & glitter-grouse' and real dangers that lock her into 'white-hot needles [of] navy narcotic / oceans' or imaginings of real-world slayings and other sins. Crown of Wild is a street-wise 'long waltz with the night' grounded in smart mournful tones. But it does not once give in to self-pity or regret. In fact, Crown of Wild is a joyful book, taking its pleasures out of the redemptive possibilities of both language and life. The lament here is real, but so is the frolic and play. And that's why you should read it and will love it. "
Daisy Fried
Fred Marchant
Adrian Blevins
Support Verse Daily
Sponsor Verse
Daily!
Home
Archives
Web Weekly Features
Support Verse Daily
About Verse Daily
FAQs
Submit to Verse Daily
Copyright © 2002-2021 Verse Daily All Rights Reserved