This body was never made by Tara Propper

Cerebral, lyrical, witty, loving and grief-worn, Tara Propper’s life-infusing poems in the collection, This body was never made, reveal an immense talent, a rare gift to the world of poetry. In a sky of many, Propper is singular. The poem “Seascape at 4:42 PM” concludes: “One chiseled cloud makes a metonymy/ of itself.  Cotton  mammals lurk above/ both pure and untrue. /4:43 PM drops/its un-blessings. It’s the ugliest of day–/and most aware.” Propper’s poems are sinuous tracings that unnerve the tick of the clock; a lot happens between 4:42 PM and 4:43 PM, a lot that is “most aware.”

–Star Black, author of three books of sonnets: Waterworn, Balefire, and Ghostwood; a collection of double-sestinas, Double Time; and a book of collaged free verse, October for Idas

Tara Propper’s This body was never made tests the precision and range of mathematical concepts in particular and, more broadly, any intellectual construct we use to understand the stunning input of our senses. Can a fractal describe a pregnant female body? A miscarriage? Rage? Death? This body was never made also tests the language with which we express these concepts, using rhymes, chimes, puns and syntactical play to push words to their limits: “Outnumbered, she let the numb root.” The raw power of these poems comes from the pressure they are under to bridge the rational and the anything but.

–Julie Sheehan, author of Orient Point and Bar Book: Poems and Otherwise and Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at Stony Brook University, NY