This week we released Sally Rosen Kindred's Says the Forest to the Girl, a chapbook of modern fairy tale poems. I've been in love with her poetry since I purchased a copy of her Hyacinth Girl Press title Darling Hands, Darling Tongue (2013). You might also enjoy our anthology Bramble & Thorn (Porkbelly Press, 2017), which includes another of Kindred's poems which was nominated for a Rhysling Award.
Kindred offers an invitation to join the wolf & the girl in the forest, to walk in this fairy tale land of Rapunzel, Little Red, and Sleeping Beauty. Here, the forest speaks. “Drink the world / you won’t admit you want—” it says, “This / is the story; to wake // you must claim it, crow-close in the telling. Climb / in.” She empowers these women, crow-touched and sharp as a tempered blade, realizing a “story where / the hard-skinned woman / carries thunder and bread / through the wood.” This is a chapbook of poems full of dandelion, ash, and bone—she asks each woman or girl to make a choice, to realize a choice is possible: “What is it that waits / inside her, a nest / or a knife, a huntsman / or an open door?” (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
Says the Forest's mixed media cover painting is "Subtle Bodywork" by Alexandra Eldridge. Each copy of the chapbook is trimmed down by hand and bound with linen thread, lightly waxed (beeswax).
RECOMMENDATIONS
You might also enjoy our anthology Bramble & Thorn (Porkbelly Press, 2017), which includes another of Kindred's poems which was nominated for a Rhysling Award.
Other chapbooks to pair with this one: Blackbird Whitetail Redhand (Porkbelly Press, 2018) by Lindsay Lusby & Feeding the Dead (Porkbelly Press, 2017) by M. Brett Gaffney & Love Me Anyway (Porkbelly Press, 2018) by Minadora Macheret.
We offer book bundle specials, where you can order any 3 titles or any 5 titles at a pretty sweet discount.
ELSEWHERE
Also this week, one of Sally's poems is up at Kenyon Review Online: "When You Call My Body An Odd Thing."