Leave It Raw, Poems by Shakira Croce

 

The poems in Shakira Croce‘s chapbook, Leave It Raw, are a celebration of the elemental forces—earth, air, fire, and water—and how they can both hurt and heal, both scrape us raw and scour us clean, in body, mind, and spirit. While these poems are grounded in flesh and blood humans and other creatures, and topographies of land, river, sea, and sky, they brim with imagination, excavate internal spaces to make hidden aspects of our humanity visible and legible to the reader. These poems reveal the abstract truth in concrete bits of lived experience, the emotional depths hiding within the deceptive exteriors of people, places, and things.

–Michael Broder

 

In her first chapbook, Shakira Croce gives readers poems that wonder about the hum of music traveling across the city, our first taste of honeysuckle, and what remains after the house fire. She shines searchlights and take us on bus rides to the end of the line. Croce weaves together contemplations on motherhood with old love notes in the land of second honeymoons, where we find ourselves among poems that rework the elements and remind us how we are all connected. With witty and sharp lines, Leave It Raw sends us upward past skydivers, hawks, airplanes, and “up against moments of eternity.” Every poem is a wild city encounter, a cry for the witnesses, and a dance with survival in our hearts.
–Juan J. Morales, author of The Handyman’s Guide to End Times

 

https://newbooksnetwork.com/shakira-croce-leave-it-raw-finishing-line-press-2020/

Like a storm waiting to break over a plain, Shakira Croce pulls at tensions and heartstrings in a debut collection filled with longing, wit, and intelligence. Through masterful imagery, Croce floats between the rural and urban with ease, pulling back the veil to see what lies beneath. These poems do not shy away from looking at life in all its beauty, violence, or complexities because within those boundaries we can begin to understand what it means to be human. As she writes in Homecoming,  “It’s about finding/the space/to bring out what’s already/inside you.” In Leave It Raw (Finishing Line Press, 2020), Croce makes that space and empties out the heart for all to see.

 

 

Mom Egg Review: Leave It Raw

 

http://momeggreview.com/20)21/02/01/leave-it-raw-by-shakira-croce/ (Review by Barbara Ellen Sorensen).

 

http://quillandparchment.com/archives/March2021/book.html (Review by Carole Mertz)

 

http://quillandparchment.com/archives/Nov2022/book3.html (Review by Quill & Parchment) by Michael Escoubas

 

Review published in Ovunque Siamo, reviewed by Lauren Amariti: https://ovunquesiamoweb.com/archive/spring-issue-2021/reviews/