Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards, and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities

In her stunning second collection, poet Olena Kalytiak Davis confirms her reputation as a breathtaking verbal acrobat, a daredevil on the high wire of life and love. Her deeply personal poems echo everything from nursery rhymes to classics, revealing poetry buried in ordinary speech. Whether remonstrating with a former lover or evoking her young children, the poet who reveals herself here is appealingly vulnerable yet gutsy, by turns blunt and tender. With dexterity and wit she stretches language to the wildest boundaries of poetic possibility: hers is a voice intimate and assured, her observations of the world delivered in love notes addressed to us all.

"did I mention my first kiss was extracted
by someone who never should have been that
lucky?" - From "Keep Some Stuff for Yourself"