USED: For Another Writing Back

By Elaine Bleakley Published by Sidebrow Books, 2014 67 pages, paperback From the publisher: “For Another Writing Back extends to strangers and creatures the same quizzical care we extend to those we love; it gives us a way of seeing that is very close to listening. Part reverie, part reflection, these lyric sequences examine childhood, 9/11, the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, giving birth, the dailyness of marriage, family gatherings, friends living with cancer, a lizard come into the house to die—all with a distinctive, intimate quiet. Attentive to what separates us and to what unexpectedly draw us close, Bleakney’s vision expresses, in the most stunning terms, not only the depth of our inwardness, but how we might seek shelter in one another.” —Joanna Klink “Bleakney’s meditative and searching poems artfully assemble not a linear narrative, but an evocative consideration of a life.” —Publishers Weekly “Offering us gorgeously fractured sentences within seemingly pristine paragraphs, Bleakney calls our attention to the ways we have been conditioned to expect literary texts to fit neatly within existing grammatical and narrative structures.” —Kristina Marie Darling, Tupelo Quarterly