Blood Sonnets by Elizabeth L. Hodges

“The breathtaking voices of Elizabeth Hodges’ beautifully written blood sonnets–furious and infuriating, touching, at times scathingly witty–knock my socks off. With Joan of Arc to Frida Kahlo, Akhmatova to Rosa Parks, Marie Antoinette to Jane Doe and more, we’re delivered into the company of some of the toughest and most heartbreaking women in history.”
–Gail Mazur, author of *Land’s End: New and Selected Poems*

“In *Blood Sonnets*, Elizabeth Hodges dons the mask of persona to enter the interiors of historical heroines from Lizzy Borden (It wasn’t forty, wasn’t forty-one, / it was quite a few less that did the job) to Rosa Parks (she was tired of arbitrary cruelty). Hodges employs pared down sonnets (only ten lines long) to make jeweled miniatures of huge lives. Compassionate and condensed, these poems are portholes into wonderful reimaginings, recasting and deepening the familiar into exquisite leaps of femininity.”
–Denise Duhamel, author of *Scald*

“Elizabeth Hodges’ inventive and spellbinding *Blood Sonnets* encompasses geography and identity to weave myths and memory, loss and trauma, art and literature. These meditative, precise poems–erudite, political, and ekphrastic–become a celebratory ritual. From Guinevere and Joan of Arc to Frida Kahlo, the “fierceness that comes through art from pain” as we inhabit different worlds resonates into past centuries, exploring history and etymology in a hymn to womankind.”
–Hélène Cardona, author of *Life in Suspension* and *Dreaming My Animal Selves*

“Elizabeth Hodges’ portraits of women combine features that seem impossible to combine: precision of historical gaze, power and frivolity of imagination, and fierceness of empathy towards the fate of the strong woman who wants to create a path of her own.”
–Polina Barskova, author of *This Lamentable City*