Dawn, Amber. Where the Words End and My Body Begins. Arsenal Pulp. Apr. 2015. 96p. ISBN 9781551525839. pap. $14.95; ebk. ISBN 9781551525846. POETRY
Dawn’s Vancouver Book Award–winning How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir and Lambda Literary Award–winning first novel, Sub Rosa, build naturally to this autobiographical first collection. In your face yet tightly, beautifully crafted, it uses the glosa, a 15th-century Spanish form, as it moves through hard-bitten high school years (“our after-school program was Alcoholics Anonymous”), depression, stripping and hustling, sex and sexuality, to tough love with tough women and a deep relationship with queer writers from Gertrude Stein to Adrienne Rich. A bravura performance—and insightful if scary reading for poetry lovers and more.
Full article of all poetry books reviewed here.