Autobiography of a wound

Here, Rebele-Henry uses language that's angry, obsessive, visceral, energized, and accomplished for her years; she was not quite 18 when this debut collection won the AWP's Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. At its heart is a kneeling fertility figure that proclaims, "All I need to be pretty is salt and old bruises," and the poems as a whole capture the many ways that women are wounded. "Everyone likes to see a pretty girl with her face crumpled/ Into a hurt beyond recognition or, better yet,/ dead somewhere with her legs open" says "Portrait of a female figure with puncture marks & frayed rope," while "Self-portrait as a broken Venus statuette" features a girl who says "I don't like children and can't give birth" while finally asserting, "We will be beautiful/ and deadly." Throughout, portraits and self-portraits, aubades and letters to F (for the fertility carvings) and A (for Aphrodite, a figurine representing womanhood) echo with a multitude of desperate voices. VERDICT Wise, startling, often painful reading from a poet to watch. © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Excerpt from "Portrait of a female figure with puncture marks & frayed rope"     Because a man is taught that his anger is A: a god B: a burning house, a burning church, a girl with a phone cord wrapped around her neck, broken capillaries like swarmed fish     Dear man:   Once I would call a kiss a bruise because they all bruised me with them, girls biting into me until I was nothing, until my veins shifted under their teeth, until the breath knocked out of me and I sat there dumb and dead at 15   Excerpted from Autobiography of a Wound by Brynne Rebele-Henry All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.