THE BODY IS WHERE IT ALL BEGINS IBD

Sinopse

Marcy Rae Henry sings so much more than the body electric, she sings a cuerpo bilingue, a body gone awry amid perimenopause, a body nevertheless moonbright and halfnakedáamong the sagebrush. Henry peppers the poems of this scintillating chapbook with evocative housings and tangible accoutrements: a golden scarab in Egypt, the telltale signs of downsized childhood ('dry foods, frozen fruit, / packets of vegetable soup'), the 'pastel art and fake plants' of a mammogram waiting room. HenryâÇÖs lyrics bridge English and Spanish like the open-ended promise of a multilingual lifespan, which is to say they are pointed and timely and yield surprising portmanteaus: 'vaccine which is vacuna /áin Spanish and sounds like a cow in a cradle.' Her speakers confuse want for wantá('quiero quererámeans i want to want /ábut could also mean i want to love') and wound (as in 'tightly') for wound (as in 'painful'). They traverse the planet in search of-and escaping from-lovers like time-traveling globetrotters, arriving finally in a tightly composed ekphrasis in response to Dieter RothâÇÖsáKarnickelköttelkarnickel,áa poem that centers around the reappearance of an ex and the summer solstice in Iceland, where the 'midnight sun stayed in the sky the way a flag stays on the moon.' Whether luminously celestial or seared into the heartâÇÖs memory, Marcy Rae Henry reminds us that 'the body is where it all begins.'-Diego Báez, author of Yaguareté White: PoemsPrepare yourself, reader. These are not poems that sit still on the page. No, these poems are dancers-leaping, twisting, roaming, and firmly rooted in the body. HenryâÇÖs quick-witted and effusive voice jetéâÇÖs expertly between English and Spanish, surprising imagery and unexpected allusion, personal narrative and philosophical insight. Whether considering mental health, travel, rabbits, sex, mammographs, relationships, or evolution-this is a poet deeply alive in the absurdity, eroticism, and beautyáof the world.-Teresa Dzieglewicz, author of Something Small of How to See a River