First Banshee
It comes out of arson
bearing aprons of berries.
It comes in stealth,
not by night,
but by prolonged days
that resemble the final
white cinders.
By a river without warning
it comes in pith,
with wings at the shoulder,
blades at the breath,
to turn water into anything
but ice is a miracle.
So long as we have poets like Laura Soloman, we have hope.
Ron Silliman
Laura Solomon was born in 1976 in Birmingham, Alabama. Her books include Bivouac (Slope Editions, 2002), Blue and Red Things (UDP, 2007), and The Hermit (UDP, 2011). Other publications include a chapbook, Letters by which Sisters Will Know Brothers (Katalanché Press 2005) and Haiku des Pierres / Haiku of Stones by Jacques Poullaoueq, a translation from the French with Sika Fakambi (Editions Apogée, 2006). Her poetry was recently included in the anthology Poets on Painters (Witchita State Press 2007), has appeared in magazines across North America and Europe and has been translated into ten languages. Most recently she has lived in Paris, Philadelphia, and Verona, Italy.
Like ghosts, these poems will reinvent themselves in your soul each time you read them. Like objects from the other world, these blue and red things will help us all re-envision what little we know of life and death. If you miss this book, you will miss something you will need throughout your life and will be forever sorry and never replete.
Dorothea Lasky
Clouds pose and rupture, scald a ring in the sternum’s ear. Not simple prowess, this is Isis’ sibling, a white wren. The era of injured ruses intersects theorem street, becomes bivalve, spawns a sister. What part of the swoon is systemic? Solomon nurses starred sects. A red song reverberates blue. And the sky ceases to be American.
Eric Baus
ISBN: 978-1-933254-32-6
Trade Paperback
Perfect-bound. 72 pp, Publication Date: January 01 2007
Distribution: SPD