In the light can be something you love all on your own, stephanie e glass writes from the raw center of lived experience. Her poems carry readers...
Praise
“Through shameless truth-telling, and incisive poems whose edges cut through years of silence, Stephanie Glass has crafted a collection that can help any of us heal from past traumas. Her poems radiate with a fierce self-compassion, and a love for the world, urging each of us: ‘darling, go make yourself a feast.’ You will want to savor every word in this book, steeped in the beauty of the Great Plains where Glass makes her home, and in the unconditional love for her son that has finally led her to believe, ‘i am / the only self / i could ever be.’ Glass shows us, again and again, with such urgency, what it means to grow beyond a family of origin, to ‘run from a name’ that no longer fits, and to understand at long last: ‘the light can be something you love/all on your own.’”
–
James Crews, author of Turning Toward Grief and Breathing Room
“The poems in the light can be something you love all on your own drift through geographical, corporeal, and domestic landscapes. They present us with the grit and music of motherhood, daughterhood, (fractured) partnership, and what happens when we are left to pick up the pieces after our safety net is broken. Here, Skittles and strawberry cheesecake can be tinged with violence, but even then, something sweet is salvaged. Glass’s intimate poems cut straight to the bone. This is a marvelous debut.”
–
Theodora Ziolkowski author of On the Rocks, Mother Tongues and Ghostlit
“It takes courage to write about the hard to grasp, the inexplicable, the occult, the spirit world– not to mention God. And to do so with honesty, while describing such loss and love and still having the fearlessness to move on is a rare thing. Stephanie Glass achieves all of this in her poem ‘shuffling the deck.’ Breathtaking!”
–
Tim Carbone, Railroad Earth
