Fragile by Cheryl Hopson

The poems in Fragile echo a crisis of the spirit: who do we turn to when we can’t find our way? “Crawl inside / Go deeper,” Hopson says as she takes us on a journey of the self in her new chapbook. From the body “emptied of its wealth” to the tones of Aretha Franklin that call back from years past “a dark-eyed / black girl/ in a bright yellow shirt/ …waving into the future,” these poems shape a cathedral of memory as they search and find anchors, and teach us how to reclaim our own stories.

–Julie Brooks Barbour , author of Haunted City

With the perfect counter-punch from this voluminous and assured voice, Cheryl Hopson’s, Fragile is evocatively muscular and wise, casting a gaze and devouring the small and unctuous moments of life—head-on.  Poised with instinct and lucid precision, Hopson takes full possession of her literary prowess, to probe the multi-textured strength of women seeking a cultural and personal identity, “We are a tribe of lost siblings.”  These richly sublime invocations make us listen, make us hear all the riffs and woven voices, even as they ache “beyond / the kindling of old dried woodenness.”  Ceremonial and spiritually resolute, a voice longing to reveal the most forbidden and indelicate territories of the self, “I will speak and tell a story of lo-sing.”  Shining a beam of light on the discordant and intricate interiors, Hopson’s lens exquisitely captures the brutal and beautiful nakedness of being alive—Here, a distinctively fresh and affirming voice blooms with necessary epiphanies of the heart and soul.” —

–Cynthia Atkins, author of In the Event of Full Disclosure