Brief Black Candles

In Brief Black Candles Lydia Valentine attends with passionate velocity to questions of survivability remembrance and the creative art of living a fully human life even in contexts and conditions that work against that what-it-could-be. ...reading becomes a mode of witness. ... Haptic revolutionary and unflinching this is a powerful debut collection by a poet who does not and cannot in this time-/ in this place- look away. -Bhanu KapilThis debut collection written in the most truthful key available to language uses poetic form and precise repetition to give shape then echo to questions of family loss justice and survival seated in the frame of an America that is a long way from post-racial-the America of today. -Sanam SheriffValentine weaves a text that is rich in sensory place and imagery. ... She demands answers calling them you and us to walk through the museums of our minds reckon with our ghosts embrace our angels and be our own crooked superheroes.-Kellie RichardsonPoet Laureate for the city of Tacoma author of The Art of Naming My PainValentine explores the ways we touch one another and the spaces between us. ... She speaks the harms we have done; she calls us to the work of repair. ... Here you will find wounds and loss. Candles extinguished burning and drowning. Young men turned into symbols. But you will also find new and bursting life...-Tina Ontiverosauthor of rough house