Resurrection Biology by Laura Orem

Maybe if we look deep enough we will see ourselves looking deep at ourselves, Laura Orem writes in “Resurrection Biology,” and in perfect reply this collection of poetry looks deeply (widely and passionately, too) at both the beauty and terror of living with and battling illness. Weaving together the past and present, politics and music and medicine, Orem’s poetry is at once narrative and lyric, formal and explosive, playful and grave. Hers is a vulnerable, brave poetic, and this book is required reading for anyone with a memory, a body and obstacles to overcome.

–Jessica Piazza, author of Interrobang and co-author (with Heather Aimee O’Neill) of Obliterations

“Laura Orem’s Resurrection Biology is a close-up glimpse of the world, the one in which we now live and the past, which inhabits us: from the arctic to Gaza; from a woman’s ravaged body to a nameless boy shot and left to die in the snow; from a famous castrato to a feathered man; from the dog, unfed on the porch, to the mammoth still sleeping in icy Neolithic dreams. Look hard at this world. As Orem says, You can stand it. Stand it some more.”

–Anne Caston, author of Prodigal, Judah’s Lion, and Flying Out with the Wounded