Each Tree Could Hold a Noose or a House

by Nina Puro

Overview

Preoccupied by haunting, poisoned places and bodies, Puro explores the intersections of personal history and social forces, integrating representations of femininity and the body, creating an undercommons, a multiplicity, a “we.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936970544
Publisher:	New Issues Poetry and Prose
Publication date:	10/02/2018
Series:	First Book Series
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

NINA PURO’s writing is in Guernica, the PEN/ America Poetry Series, Jubilat, and others. They’re a member of the Belladonna* Collaborative; author of two chapbooks; and recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Syracuse University (MFA, 2012), Brooklyn Community Pride Foundation, Deming Fund, Wurlitzer Foundation, Saltonstall, and others. Currently pursuing a master’s degree in social work from NYU, they provide psychotherapy and advocacy to sex workers and victims of human trafficking in NYC.

What People are Saying About This

Eileen Myles

“I love these poems. They are romantic, full of stuff, shape shifting, gendered, dark and political. And I am never bored. I have not read these poems before. They are not outside their canon yet they improve and expand it. They’ve got some pain and some weight. I mean they’re muscularly true.”

Editorial Reviews

The anguish and drama in this capacious first volume arise both without and within. It's a tumultuous, unguarded collection of free verse in many contours, modes and sizes, some nearly baroque in their deep-delving obscurity, some plainly confessional, devoted to troubles shared by many women and girls…[Puro's] poems tend to end up dramatic, breathtaking, alive with an almost self-immolating energy inseparable from youth…

The New York Times Book Review - Stephanie Burt

★ 11/05/2018
Puro questions global and personal history alike in a lithe, graceful dreamscape of a debut that addresses culpability, ignorance, hope, free will, intimacy, and more. “We are all part of a current, it is said, but perhaps it is dark. We become agents to projects we didn’t know existed,” Puro writes. The world described within is marked by legacies of trauma and violation on various scales, whether in regard to the effects of colonialism (“the Catholic church built around the holy Pueblo dirt”) or sexual violence (“was she a runaway, pregnant, kidnapped, hospitalized, a refugee, to return or not, partially or fully”). Stylistically, a stream of consciousness engages and retracts as Puro employs incisive wordplay, repetition, use of white space, and disjointed syntax that results in a sense of immediacy and unity. Meanwhile, a series of elegies displays Puro’s dark humor: “they’ve cordoned off/ our block with coffeeshops/ like they’re making a moat.” Throughout, Puro challenges readers to confront their own perceptions and discover what lies beneath: “This riot is not/ A fable or a metaphor. I am telling/ You the truth. I am telling/ You everything. I’m making/ A face under my face.” (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Won

Lambda Literary Award: Lesbian Poetry

Won

Lambda Literary Award: Lesbian Poetry