Synopses & Reviews
Poetry. Offering a new narrative of physical body constituted in perilous scenes of contact, HARM performs the loss of that fictive division between a unified body and its surrounding world. Terrifying and unlooked-for harmonies emerge in these poems, which dwell in a medicalized landscape where both the body and the land are monitored and laid bare. Troubling the idea of cure by recasting it in the terms of harm, HARM shifts between warning and error, nature and the body. In the sense of Baudelaire's "correspondences," bloodclots externalize into "sunclots" and the air is "rusty with blood." The book troubles the idea of cure by casting it also as a form of harm itself. Moving amid the prose poem and the lyric, HARM navigates a landscape of extremity both frightening and filled with wonders.
Review
"Harm, Hillary Gravendyk's powerful first book of poetry, is a book that resists summaryindeed, one might aptly term it a book of resistances. . . A book of awarenesses and sensations; it articulates the micro-wisdoms of that peculiarly timeless condition that is everyday life, the site of lyric embodiment and our extraordinary mortality." Lyn Hejinian, author, The Book of a Thousand Eyes
Review
"Builds a botanica of hurts and healings, ruptures and resolutions. Its prose poems flesh out a world of intention and resemblance, and its exploded lyrics ring with 'bright sound.' The poems are beautiful and seek to rethink the beautiful, inviting us into a world that 'riots and unspools.'" Elizabeth Willis, author, Address and Meteoric Flowers
Review
"Most of Gravendyk's brief and evocative poems concern her recovery from major surgery: most of those achieve formal variety, emotional clarity (pain, fear, gratitude), and a jeweled fragmentation of phrasing." —Publishers Weekly (January 16, 2012)
Synopsis
Offering evocative reflections on the experience of receiving a double lung transplant, these lyrical constructs heighten the awareness of the body while deeply delving into human suffering. Terrifying and resisted harmonies emerge, dwelling in a medical landscape where both the body and the land are monitored and laid bare. Shifting between warning and error, the idea of cure” is repositioned as a form of harm itself and the lines between sleep and wakefulness are blurred. Clear yet complex, Hillary Gravendyk's work is less of a personal memoir, but rather moves between a prose poem and lyricnavigating a landscape of extremity both frightening and filled with wonders.
About the Author
Hillary Gravendyk is an Assistant Professor of English at Pomona College in Claremont, CA. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as American Letters and Commentary, Barnstorm, The Bellingham Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, The Colorado Review, The Eleventh Muse, FOURTEENS HILLS, MARY, 1913: A JOURNAL OF FORMS, Octopus Magazine, Tarpaulin Sky and other venues. She is the two-time winner of the Eisner Prize in Poetry and her chapbook, The Naturalist, was published by Achiote Press in 2008. Hillary is currently working on a critical book, Chronic Poetics, that explores intersubjectivity and embodiment in the poetic works of Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, George Oppen, and Larry Eigner. She often collaborates with the photographer Benjamin Burrill and is interested in mixed-media forms. She lives in Claremont, California.