Image for The trailhead

The trailhead

Part of the WESLEYAN POETRY SERIES series
See all formats and editions

"I'm learning to allow for visions," the primary speaker of The Trailhead announces, setting out through a landscape populated by swan-killers, war torturers, and kings.

Much of the book takes place in the contemporary American West, and these poems reckon with the violence inherent in that history.

A "conversion narrative" of sorts, the book examines the self as a "burned-over district," individual and cultural pain as a crucible in which the book's sibyls and spinsters are remade, transfigured.

Sacralization/is when things become holy, also/when vertebrae fuse," the book tells us, pulling at the tensions between secular and sacred embodiment, exposing the essential difficulty of being a speaking woman.

The collection arrives at a taut, gendered calling-a firm faith in the power and worth of the female voice-and a broader faith in poetry not as a vehicle of atonement or expiation, but as bulwark against our frailties and failings.

Read More
Available
£14.80 Save 20.00%
RRP £18.50
Add Line Customisation
Usually dispatched within 4 weeks
Add to List
Product Details
Wesleyan University Press
0819578118 / 9780819578112
Hardback
811.6
05/04/2018
United States
English
90 pages
23 cm
General (US: Trade) Learn More