Every Form of Ruin : Poems / Erin Adair-Hodges.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Adair-Hodges, Erin, author.

Series:

Pitt poetry series.

Pitt Poetry Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American poetry--21st century.

American poetry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (119 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press, [2023]

Summary:

A rebuttal to Aeschylus's Oresteia, Every Form of Ruin posits the Erinyes' fury as righteous, understanding Clytemnestra's rageful response to loss, and refusing Iphigenia's relegation to a footnoted sacrifice. A fierce and darkly funny examination of anger, these lyrical poems push back against silencing by playing witness to a world where the experiences of women, nonbinary, and femme-identifying people are too often ignored, their responses dismissed as hysterical. These poems are also investigations into the loneliness of midlife; the search for one's own self when that self has given its life to service. Every Form of Ruin counters our culture's erasure of women and resists the categorizations of maiden, mother, crone by blurring those distinctions through the creation of voices that are moved by rage and resistance. BLACK THUMB The dogwood was threateningto swallow the back garden's light, so I borrowed a chainsaw and gas. Its last berries a memory of red, the fruit bitter, tiny angry mangos in the mouthof its killer. Nights my son chooses his father to read him into silence, I practice not lovinganything. Less like learning than remembering. As a child, I studied how to be a child.I was given a doll to care for but could never remember its name.I left her face down everywhere.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

I.

Black Thumb

Jane Calls to Clytemnestra

Mostly Married, Alone at Night

Variations On

After Ever

When I Say Jesus Was My Boyfriend

Long Song as Iphigenia in a Teen Movie Asked to Prom as Part of a Prank

Juvenilia

Self-Portrait as Erinyes' Dating Profile

Song in the Key of Men Who Try to Fuck Me Then Say They Love Me as a Friend

New Grammar

Wherein I Attempt to Write about Something Different Than Women's Anger after an Editor Calls My Work Brilliant but "Single-Minded"

Song in the Key of Negged

Extinction

Cassandra at the Title IX Hearing

Haunted

II.

Unmappable

The End of September

Faithless

Midlife / Midwest

Civilization

The Lurk

Love Song as Parking Lot in Which Boys from My High School Do Donuts

Antiquity Abecedarian

I Have Cried Off All My Makeup

My Best Friend's Abuser Takes Her to Court

Self-Portrait as Portrait of the Erinyes Pursuing Orestes

Epigrams Upon the Health-Giving Qualities of Mirth

My New Boss Has Been Thinking a Lot about Time

III.

Lunacy

Manzano | Corazón | Un Puño de Tierra

Baba Yaga Bought the House Already Like That or I Thought This Would Be Different

Host

Hechizos Para la Bruja Solitaria

Sad Cartography

Postcard with Photo of Samuel Beckett, Sent by a Friend

Milk Sickness

1980s Business Ladies

On a Hike up Prospect Rock with Three Women Sixteen Years My Junior

Squad

Jesus Christ Is Looking for Me in Vermont

Neighbors

Panic Attack at Applebee's

Self-Portrait as Alone with Thoughts

Cleo

Bosque Nocturne

Self-Portrait as Arithmetic in a Haunted Forest

Lake Eumenides

Notes

Acknowledgments.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780822988915

0822988917