A Flower Burst Open by Autumn Newman

Autumn Newman, strong, wise survivor and poet par excellence, brings the power of poetry to bear on unbearable truth—for all our sakes. Born from the crucible of domestic violence, the poems of A Flower Burst Open bless everything they touch with ingenious poetic structures, exquisitely calibrated meters, and searingly apt imagery. Here is a book of hard-won words, none of them wasted. It demands to be heard.

–Annie Finch, author of Spells: New and Selected Poems

Like Louise Gluck, Newman mythologizes her reality, connecting her experiences to those of women and goddesses from time immemorial. Her imagery is potent, hard and bright, full of metals and minerals, acids and chemicals: “The world digests us into women… / Childhood snaps shut and we are pinned insects.” Deconstructing an abusive relationship, she exerts bardic “revenant eyes” to combine and subvert tropes in novel, alchemical ways: “black birds flew out of my mouth… / But you struck me so hard that I put them all back.” Reaching deep to draw power from the many multi-textured meters of the world’s poetic traditions, stamped in language vibrating with controlled violence, these are poems that speak back to the violence in the world.

–Jenna Le, author of Six Rivers, A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora, and Manatee Lagoon

In a stunning array of verse forms ancient and modern, Autumn Newman lays bare the pain of domestic violence. The once “pinned insect” uses her razor sharp pen to pin the abuser. Extraordinarily honest, intimate, and subtle, Newman finds in poetic form the structures of resilience. These poems will astound and move you with their unfolding of “jeweled flashes” bright with profound feeling.

–Katherine Barrett Swett, author of Voice Message, winner of the 2019 Donald Justice Poetry Prize