Phantom Limbs by Deirdre Fagan

In Deirdre Fagan’s stunning new collection, Phantom Limbs, we are drawn into a world inhabited by compassion, lost innocence, grief, and healing. These poems pulse and ache; they leave us with a sense of deep reverence for life and what it means to be truly devoted to a loved one. Throughout this tender collection, Fagan brings us glimmers of hope and resilience, “a new life signaling life, / an urging forward.”  What lingers for the reader is heart strength, and how we all have this within our core, human selves.

–Cristina M. R. Norcross, Founding Editor of Blue Heron Review; author of The Sound of a Collective Pulse and other titles

Deirdre Fagan’s Phantom Limbs explores deeply and tenderly what all of us hope will never happen as she chronicles a journey of loss and recovery through short lyrics which read like gems. From despair and a hopefulness about life, Fagan has brought to us both a tearful and joyous new collection of poems that reminds us we have much to learn.

–DeWitt Clinton, author of Hello There winner of the 2022 Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award

In her poem “The trouble with pairs,” Deirdre Fagan begins, “I want to be inside of you / No, not like that / I want to unzip you / And climb inside.” Somehow, this is what Fagan manages to do throughout Phantom Limbs: she magically inhabits her readers—their thoughts, their feelings, their everyday lives. And then she tells us about it all in ways that resonate, stun, soothe. Readers will navigate this collection as people do the dark, “but once you can feel the switches / . . . you are / where you are, whether you want / to be or not.” These poems—and all that Fagan says in them—help unburden us from the often-crushing weight of this world, if only for the time we spend reading them.

–Marissa Glover, Author of Box Office Gospel and Let Go of the Hands You Hold