"The poems in Protection Spell feel like the music of an Aeolian harp specially tuned to catch the winds of trauma and tragedy--and the intense commitments made by love. Jennifer Givhan knows that to be a mother, spouse, Latina, American, teacher, writer, human being is necessarily to be political. She has a gift for making poem-spaces where story can meet song--detailed, dynamic, sometimes desperate, always gorgeous." --Daisy Fried "In her brilliant second collection, Jenn Givhan gives us poems that both balm and break the heart. In an age when much of what passes for poetry leans toward obfuscation, Givhan provides us with what is truly difficult: an honest account of who and what we are, individually and collectively. In language that is at turns both lyrical and colloquial, Jenn Givhan's Protection Spell 'can't resist telling . what darkness will come, what light.'" --John Murillo "Jennifer Givhan's Protection Spell is an aegis for re-membering, for piecing back together trauma-fractured selves and communities that are displaced in space and time.

Givhan interrogates history with lyrical revisions beneath which misogyny, racism, and poverty kneel to a new prayer: 'Prayer for two or more gathered// in prayer, for shuteye, for danger, for rust.' No one is safe alone, and Givhan has given us a complex song to accompany us in this world." --Phillip B. Williams "There's a powerful magic in Jennifer Givhan's Protection Spell , one that offers a lyrical and unflinching look at motherhood and America, at race and history, the cultural collisions that pry us open and 'the dark / matter holding us together.' These are fearless, unforgettable poems." --Matthew Olzmann "Jennifer Givhan is an astonishing poet. In her second book, beautifully built lines dovetail into stanzas that reveal how mothering brings the self closer to both beauty and terror and how the self navigates the minefields of identity and home. Givhan's explorations are acrobatic, lyrical, and ravishing.

Protection Spell is a searing and vital book." --Eduardo C. Corral.