Paradise Is Jagged

<p>In this extraordinary collection Ann Fisher-Wirth looks levelly at mortality grief and memory and reckons with what it is to be urgently alive bringing her incisive nuance to subjects ranging from the loss of a beloved sister to Mississippi's Parchman Penitentiary to our imperiled natural world to the comforts of marital love. In Wooden Comb Fisher-Wirth writes I cannot reconcile how the world is sweet how the world is burning. <em>Paradise Is Jagged</em> is too wise a book to promise impossible reconciliation. Instead it offers a benediction of sorts: Walk with me through this difficult and tender place it says. Willingly gratefully we do.  </p><p>-Catherine Pierce <em>Danger Days</em> <span style=background-color: rgba(250 250 250 1)>2021-2025 Mississippi Poet Laureate</span></p>