The Pugilist's Daughter

<p>Blending humor with pathos <em>The Pugilist's Daughter</em> illuminates some of the complications inherent in a fateful family position as the daughter most emotionally enmeshed with a wayward father. Some of the poems like First Night How Insomnia Runs Through a Bloodline Black Pearl and the titular poem portray a childhood and youth scarred by sorrow and loss while others such as Story It Was Like This and Vigil trace some of the steps and missteps taken to unravel the Gordian knot characteristic of  this position within an electric constellation. Buoyed by humor blunt charm and the desperate pursuit of serenity in impossible situation Lowery's account charts a narrow path out of dangerous waters in poems such as After My Seventh Christmas At Mass Greensfield Park North Side Age Thirteen and Childlike.</p><p><br></p><p>A native of Central New York State-where she still spends part of her summers-Lowery sets most of the poems in the small industrial town of Johnson City NY or in her father's birthplace of Syracuse. Additionally some poems refer to Texas where the poet's father lived for a few years held as he phrased it an economic hostage. The poet has lived in Texas and taught literature and creative writing full time for many years in the English Department at the University of St. Thomas in Houston.</p><p><br></p><p>This collection is the tip of the iceberg in what the poet hopes will be a full collection of poetry coming out in the next few years. Three of the poems in this collection (It Was Like This A Man Takes a Drink A Drink Takes a Drink A Drink Takes a Man and I Never Said) were first made public in Lowery's play <em>A Heroine Free Summer</em> given an equity production in Houston by Mildred's Umbrella Theater Company in the spring of 2017. <em>The California Quarterly</em> (defunct for decades now) published Married Off as Married in one of its last issues and How Insomnia Runs Through a Bloodline is forthcoming from <em>Texas 7 (TACWT Proceedings). </em></p><p><br></p><p>She wrote some of the earliest poems in this collection under the tutelage of poet Ruth Stone her mentor and PhD dissertation director at Binghamton University. Lowery's work has been influenced by the poetry of Sharon Olds Maya Angelou Elizabeth Bishop and many others. If she could write like Wallace Stevens she would.</p><p><br></p>