With This Body

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Luray Gross's </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>With This Body</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> has through lines</span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>: </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>early life on a farm body connections reactions to current events and traumas the refuge of words. Dedicated to all who have lost a child that child could be a younger self as well as one lost to illness or tragic circumstance. Often in these poems the adult watches the young self times and lives overlapping. The effect is delicate; our empathy is cajoled. Many poems are reactions to poets almost letters among them to Jane Hirshfield Richard Hugo Samira Negrouche and many more. Gross's impulse to communicate with other writers is expansive yet personal. And as readers we are always welcome in the conversation. In the center of this book What the Poem Carries spells out some of the magic of these poems:</span></p><p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>This poem wants to blend in a chorus</em></p><p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>sounding any note of the chord.</em></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>and</span></p><p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>This poem knows we all need a break from despair</em></p><p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>and all that residual sadness. It's been around long enough</em></p><p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>to know that the blues are really love songs</em></p><p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>and making peace with terror</em></p><p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>is the price you pay to stay alive.</em></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The same or similar ideas and images keep turning up-a favorite sweater interactions while teaching kids figures that inhabit a recognizable world. </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>With This Body</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> is a house of many rooms companionable. It'll get into your dreams.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>-Valerie Fox author of</span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Insomniatic</em></p>