Night Willow
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Phoenicia Publishing is proud to announce the publication of Night Willow, by the celebrated poet Luisa A. Igloria. In this shining and unsparing new collection of poems, Igloria draws from her own childhood memories, relationships, and keen sensory awareness to create a dreamlike series of pictures in which we, too, may see our growth through the experiences of joys, loss, and the poignant wisdom that comes with age. As poet Sean Thomas Dougherty puts it, Igloria’s poems “get to the heart of why poetry is written: the pure lyric impulse of trying to live.”
In old stories, the elders speak of warriors with heart: “nakem;” of growing wiser as “growing in heart.” In this fierce, sensual collection, Luisa A. Igloria tracks her own growing of heart, and in the process tears open the reader’s heart as well. Her poems knife through the surfaces of ordinary life to reveal layers of poignancy, depth, and vulnerability. …With razor-sharp language and an unflinching eye, she reveals a world of secret names given in childhood to confuse the gods, …the ways past and present shadow each other, the urgent desire “to touch, be touched, be filled with fleeting grace.” — Reine Arcache Melvin, author of A Normal Life and Other Stories In prismatic prose poems of daughters and fathers, of aging and longing, of loves and laments, Luisa A. Igloria fashions for us an ancient tongue for the 21st century, one that gets to the heart of why poetry is written: the pure lyric impulse of trying to live. In a time when words too often play flippant ironic games, Igloria instead takes us beneath language’s skin, to show us “how the planets align, how trees cast their shadows along the broken boundary; how the wolves howl as they press closer to their prey.” — Sean Thomas Dougherty, author of Scything Grace; Nightshift Belong to Lorca (Paterson Poetry Prize finalist); Except by Falling (2000 Pinyon Press Poetry Prize); and Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line |
Night Willow
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