Synopses & Reviews
Whether exploring the porous borders between sin and virtue or examining the lives of saints and mystics to find the human experiences in stories of the divine, the poems in No Confession, No Mass move toward restoration and reunion.
Jennifer Perrine’s poems ask what healing might be possible in the face of sexual and gendered violence worldwide—in New Delhi, in Steubenville, in Juárez, and in neighborhoods and homes never named in the news. The book reflects on our own complicity in violence, “not confessing, but unearthing” former selves who were brutal and brutalized—and treating them with compassion. As the poems work through these seeming paradoxes, they also find joy, celebrating transformations and second chances, whether after the failure of a marriage, the return of a reluctant soldier from war, or the everyday passage of time.
Through the play of language in received forms—abecedarian, sonnet, ballad, ghazal, villanelle, ballade—and in free verse buzzing with assonance, alliteration, and rhyme, these poems sing their resistance to violence in all its forms.
Review
“Poems that stick with you like a song that won’t stop repeating itself in your brain, poems whose cadences burrow into your bloodstream, orchestrating your breathing long before their sense attaches its hooks to your heart.”
—Washington Post on Captivity
Review
“Toi Derricotte’s poems show us our underlife, tender and dreadful. And they are vibrant poems, poems in the voice of the living creature, the one who escaped—and paused, and turned back, and saw, and cried out. This is one of the most beautiful and necessary voices in American poetry today.”
—Sharon Olds on Captivity
Review
“Derricotte’s words touch the reader as life has touched her, soul and body. This is a strong, sensuous, original, courageous book.”
—Adrienne Rich on Captivity
Review
“In plain language that does not settle for simplicity or cliché, these poems probe being at its root—sexually, spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually—and recount how violence, both physical and mental, ravages the self.”
—Library Journal on Tender
Review
“This is a personal, moving work about child abuse, racial ‘passing,’ and women making art, and will attract all readers interested in these topics.”
—Library Journal
Review
“No Confession, No Mass is lyrical, inventive, and full of surprises, offering us fresh ways of seeing old stories. The music is a delight throughout—agile and apt—language enjoying itself! Jennifer Perrine writes: ‘and returned her whole, startled raw, launched her back into the world.’ This is what fine poetry can do—and No Confession, No Mass does it.”—Ellen Bass, author of Like a Beggar
About the Author
“Poems that stick with you like a song that won’t stop repeating itself in your brain, poems whose cadences burrow into your bloodstream, orchestrating your breathing long before their sense attaches its hooks to your heart.”
—Washington Post on Captivity
“Toi Derricotte’s poems show us our underlife, tender and dreadful. And they are vibrant poems, poems in the voice of the living creature, the one who escaped—and paused, and turned back, and saw, and cried out. This is one of the most beautiful and necessary voices in American poetry today.”
—Sharon Olds on Captivity
“Derricotte’s words touch the reader as life has touched her, soul and body. This is a strong, sensuous, original, courageous book.”
—Adrienne Rich on Captivity
“In plain language that does not settle for simplicity or cliché, these poems probe being at its root—sexually, spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually—and recount how violence, both physical and mental, ravages the self.”
—Library Journal on Tender