Praise for Love Prodigal "An intense flow of loose-limbed, vividly imagined, and deeply felt poems. Brimhall addresses life''s everyday suffering in astonishing language that will attract a wide range of readers. Highly recommended."-- Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal , STARRED review "Traci Brimhall''s fifth collection simmers. These poems of mid-life renewal reverberate with the past, rewritten from a transformative new landscape. Throughout, Brimhall builds ''the truth of motherhood,'' a motherhood set realistically within illness, divorce, transformations. As these poems enthusiastically remind us, all of life continues to happen when mothering, including the passions, bodily and poetic, that thread a body of work, a personal history that moves toward freedom and power."-- Rebecca Morgan Frank, Lit Hub "Writes with daring and dazzling descriptions of intimacies real and surreal.
"-- Roberta E. Winter, New York Journal of Books "At the heart of Traci Brimhall''s enchanting new collection is the image of the phoenix, the mythical bird that rises from its own ashes--resurrection, second chances. The aubade is a recurring form in Love Prodigal , a love poem signifying sun-up, lovers parting at dawn . [and] interestingly, the fleuron, or glyph, that signals the start of each new section of this book, is a rising sun. All of this points to Brimhall''s overarching vision of our (i.e., her) messy human lives."-- Charles Rammelkamp, Compulsive Reader "Love, divorce, illness, and grief are at the center of Brimhall''s expansive and moving fifth collection (after Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod ).
The title poem is among the book''s most evocative, framing love as something that, like the prodigal son, departs, endures hardship, and returns--sometimes changed, sometimes forgiven."-- Publishers Weekly "A narrative underlies Traci Brimhall''s new collection, Love Prodigal , the story of a complex childhood, a broken marriage and inherited illness, and then of learning to live with loss, to grow past it into new love and an acceptance of the body as it is. The poems themselves, however, are not at all narrative. Instead, Brimhall braids a handful of metaphors into lyrics that echo each other and deepen our understanding."-- Susanna Lang, Rhino Poetry "Brimhall is in full stride as she continues to travel across the state with poetry in hand."-- Huascar Medina, Kansas Reflector Praise for Traci Brimhall "The questions posed by this stunning collection will remind readers of their own mortality, while reawakening the power and fury within them."-- Publishers Weekly , Starred Review "This emotionally articulate, intense debut gives us the myth of self in its various incarnations: elegiac, surreal, meditative, erotic, dreamlike. I love [Brimhall''s] luscious verbal texturing and lyric slipperiness, an assertive voice, a sensuality, a glow.
A beautiful book."-- Ilya Kaminsky "Traci Brimhall''s Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod unfurls like a series of dispatches from the shores of grief, and then the burning wildfire of divorce. [H]er poems feel as intimate as a handwritten letter."-- John Freeman, Literary Hub "Poetry for the new century: awake to the world, spiritually profound, and radiant with lyric intelligence."-- Carolyn Forché ". Traci Brimhall''s new work is brutal and blisteringly beautiful. Our Lady of the Ruins is dangerously alive."-- Tracy K.
Smith "With each successive book, there''s even more grandness to Brimhall''s narrative voice. She writes with a commanding sense, with some poems feeling like the voice beaming to Job, and other poems arriving like a hypnotizing whisper at night. Another masterful book from one of our finest poets."-- Millions.