our own beautiful brutality

<p>In poems both brutal and beautiful Karen Poppy traces the interconnectedness-symbiotic antagonistic and metaphorical-of the endangered antelope and human worlds. All the grace and violence of both worlds is here in poems that are moving necessary and ultimately life-affirming. I could not put down this powerful book.</p><p><strong> -Steve Bellin-Oka</strong> author of <em>Instructions for Seeing a Ghost</em></p><p><br></p><p>Poppy is a poet of the 21st Century. Her pen is compelling pointing out the crucial need for human animal and environmental rights and respect. Her poems inspire transformation.</p><p><strong> -Lynne Cox</strong> American long-distance open-water swimmer New York Times best-selling author and speaker</p><p><br></p><p>This glowing collection of Karen Poppy's verses reads at once as spare and abundant elegant and generous. Her lines stretch and shrink experimenting with a wide range of forms and her best rhymes read like plot twists. <em>our own beautiful brutality</em> asks what all readers and writers ask each other across the resonance of words: how in sudden shift did I become you?</p><p><strong> -Betsy Cornwell</strong> New York Times best-selling author and founder of The Old Knitting Factory: making space for single moms to make art in a 1906 knitting school in Connemara</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>