naked: poems inspired by remarkable women by Jennifer L. Gauthier (NWVS #162)

This is a stirring and inspiring collection of poems, each one filled with surprises and discoveries.  I love the way Jennifer Gauthier immerses us in a sea of women’s voices and stories — historical, autobiographical and fictional — mingling well-known figures like Sarah Bernhardt and Dorothea Lange with courageous and unheralded women like the pacifist Mayor’s spouse in Woolwich, England, 1937. Each beautifully constructed poem opens out into a whole world; together these engaging poems create a fascinating conversation across time and place, about resilience, aspiration, the quest for justice, and the importance of discovering one’s deepest passion.

–Harriet Scott Chessman, author of Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper (2001)

Jennifer Gauthier‘s arresting poems recapture the spirit and hope of courageous women of the past, who sought to make our world a better place.  We owe her thanks for restoring them to the historical record.

–Natalie Zemon Davis, historian and author of Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (1995)

Jennifer Gauthier‘s poetry is both thoughtful and assured, tender yet strong, and wholly embedded in women-centered themes. She depicts both the average, daily occurrences and the larger, worldly matters with equal ease. Her symbolism and metaphors both delight and intrigue. Readers will find lines that roll off the tongue and shimmer with the same brilliance as those written by the best classical and modern poets. It is the type of poetry book you will want to keep on your bedside table for those moments when you need to digest a poem or two on those evenings when you need the voice of another woman to reassure and console.

–Dawn Reno Langley, author of more than 30 books, including the novel The Mourning Parade (Amberjack), as well as the forthcoming nonfiction book, You Are Divine: The Search for the Goddess in All of Us (Llewellyn)