Village of Doomed Women by Thomas Patterson

The first and penultimate poems in Thomas Patterson’s newest collection, Village of Doomed Women, give us a glimpse into his unique worldview. From time being malleable to string theory, he weaves a thread of compassion for human suffering. His is not a sentimental viewpoint. That Patterson has chosen to write of women’s suffering, sometimes in their own voices, and does so successfully, speaks to loss as a human condition not specific to gender. Patterson takes us on a panoramic trip through time and space, through unbearable experiences, our own and those we can only imagine. Although the poems in this collection cover different eras and countries, they are woven seamlessly together. The last lines from “Romantic Dreamscapes” take us from suffering to resignation.   the next day and the one after that I will present myself among the living the way I should the way I must each day a new little lie.   The acceptance of our losses, no matter how begrudgingly, is the ultimate gift Patterson offers his reader in this deftly written collection of poems.

–Colette Jonopulos, Editor, Tiger’s Eye Press

In his harrowing new collection of poems, Village of Doomed Women, Thomas Patterson launches the reader through time and geography, illness and personal grief, and the universal village of suffering: Babi Yar, the South Sudan, Afghanistan, and more. The “doomed women” on these pages become, for us as readers, “an aesthetic of old ghosts,” and the poems serve both as witness and tribute. In a tone both dreamlike and brooding, Patterson’s language guides us with heartbreaking precision through this landscape of loss.

–Doug Ramspeck, author of Black Flowers (LSU Press)