Hit the Ground by Liz Whiteacre

Liz Whiteacre insightfully reimagines the story of injury, the way a life can change “in the time it took to hit the ground,” by peeling the story open and revealing that it is truly a multitude of possible narratives. Hit the Ground begins as our story, an accident bathed in “ambulant light,” but then moves past causation to the ongoing work of repair: negotiating relationships with others, with prognosis, and, most stunningly, with pain, a lover who “comes on strong” and “seduces you slowly, until one morning/ you wake to find its toothbrush in your bathroom.” Through compelling restraint and humor, Whiteacre discovers that “accident becomes adhesive,” a point of vibrant contact between us.

–Laurie Clements Lambeth, author of Veil and Burn

Hit the Ground is a very welcome addition to emerging field of disability poetry. Whiteacre’s gift is her ability to convey the experience of an acquired disability shorn of easy sentiment, pity or cliché in accessible language. No post-modern passport is required to enter her intelligent narrative. Hit the Ground is a train everyone can board and emerge with a much better understanding of disability for the ride. Whiteacre’s poetry does for spinal cord injury what Patricia Wellingham-Jones’ Don’t Turn Away does for mastectomy. She continues in subtle ways the work of Jim Ferris’ Hospital Poems and embarks on the important task of how to communicate the experience of pain.

–Michael Northen, editor of Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability

Liz Whiteacre knows pain, and she tracks it here in its familiar form, the way it moves in and leaves its toothbrush in the bathroom. Her autobiographical poetry is detail-rich and wisdom-driven, resonant with the secrets that the less-than-able bodies hold. She disrupts the simple narrative of injury to recovery with a persistent attention to after-effects, scars, and memory. These words on the page in their refreshing honesty offer testimony to the fact that writing heals even as they rearrange and question the notion of healing.

–Sonya Huber, author of Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir

Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!]