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If one of the aims of poetry is to condense our vast, contradictory, and beautiful world into the briefest of songs, Sherri Levine’s debut collection stands as a testament to its possibility. Each poem maps out the human heart, in all its internal conflicts, with precision and grace. From broken to sustainable relationships, fears of aging to cultural explorations, familial death to gender studies, these poems probe the many paradoxes of living with an open, curious mind and heart. There is great wisdom and honesty here, vulnerability and linguistic perception. This series of meditative poems simultaneously laments and celebrates life, grounding us in a familiar world that eventually open us up to something far greater.

—John Sibley Williams, author of 
As One Fire Consumes Another 
and Skin Memory

Part elegy, part love letter, part confrontation of self and others, Sherri Levine’s first full-length book of poetry traces an emotional journey in which she explores the often confounding mysteries of childhood as they evolve into the traumas and occasional joys of later life: a young woman’s confusion about men, about trust, about the nature of sanity. A difficult mother-daughter relationship resolves at the end of the mother’s life, and the mother becomes, in memory, “more beautiful.” Trouble, love, forgiveness. Isn’t this the way our lives go? Levine’s fine collection ponders these vital conundrums and provides a revelatory path toward understanding them.

—Andrea Hollander, author of 
Blue Mistaken for Sky 
and Landscape with Female Figure

With an artistic, tonal range, Levine’s fearless poems ricochet between captivating and inescapable. At heart, the allure is a strangeness and the energy relentless, as she fulfills with savvy two sections titled “Girl” (then) “Unleashed.” She knows where the journey ends and will not blink. As readers, we better not either. With humor sometimes subtle sometimes dark, images gorgeous or stunning, these poems travel twists and loops and satisfy as they land on sure feet.

—John C. Morrison, author of 
Monkey Island 
and Heaven of the Moment