WHEN I STOPPED COUNTING by Charissa Menefee

The poems in WHEN I STOPPED COUNTING employ a complex and conscious form of nostalgia, sifting memories and distilling them into a potent tonic which questions typical assumptions regarding gender and class. At the same time, Menefee’s imagery polishes the ordinary losses inherent in passing time into startling brilliance. Clever but never easy, these poems often build to stunning turns. Like the grandmother dreaming of sewing in one poem, Menefee is “feeding the fabric, / the stitches linking deftly as she turns the cloth at / precisely the right moment—a perfect corner.” This work, “tangled in neurons, / quietly scratching,” continues to resonate long after you’ve turned the final page.
–Julie Hensley, Author of VIABLE, THE LANGUAGE OF HORSES, and LANDFALL

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]

“Being barefoot is always worth it,” concludes one of Charissa Menefee’s young narrators about the risk posed by needles on the floor of a beloved grandmother’s sewing room. Like many of the other spare, evocative poems in WHEN I STOPPED COUNTING, this poem advocates embracing experience rather than shying away from it. Portraying vivid scenes of womanhood and survival—the young girl learning to handle a shotgun, the mother laboring with her third child, the grandmother dreaming in her wheelchair—Menefee poignantly underscores the value of counting loves and possibilities rather than counting losses and lacks.
–Sheila Sanderson, Author of KEEPING EVEN and Editor of ALLIGATOR JUNIPER

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]