The Rape Poems
"Frances Driscoll's The Rape Poems is a deeply disturbing, compelling and somehow beautifully rendered sequence of poems, in which a terrible wounding has been transformed by long meditation, careful attention to detail, and superb artistry. Though hers is a landscape one would think would be strewn with the landmines of sentimentality and self-pity, there is never a false step here as she guides us through her nightmare. Of how many books of poetry can one truly say, 'I could not put this book down until I'd read it through to the end'? This is one of those rare books."  --Paul Mariani"It is impossible to praise this book too much-its power, maturity, sorrow, and fierce resistance. This book should be required reading in America."  --Lynn Emanuel"Not since the Beats has reportage been employed without the slightest pretension. Harrowing and obsessively skeptical, tender and private and hugely humane, these unsettling poems arrive like dispatches from the very source of our wounds."  --Ralph Angel"Powerful. Sad. Touching. Sad. Inspiring. Sad. What a gift she has."  --Nikki Giovanni"These are stunning poems, in every sense of the word. Tracing the circuitous and torturous paths of memory, Frances Driscoll fearlessly looks back on, and into, rape. Her triumph is that she refuses to trivialize through a mode of confessionalism. Instead, these are poems that are lush with a common, familiar, evocative language that cuts through the surface detritus of our lives, the 'pastel drugs' of therapy, the police reports, the 'cheap filler' of the national wire. What she ultimately reveals are the beauty and terror of what she hesitantly calls 'real life.' These are poems of great courage. And if these are poems of terror, they are also poems of beauty, as Frances Driscoll takes us to a place finally colored by the 'lemon-green of very young leaves.'"  --Gillian ConoleyAberrational MannersAfter A Time Consuming Dental ProcedureAll Of This Happens In A Warm Coastal ClimateAnd I Put AwayAutomatic IcemakerBasketsBread, WaterBut RememberCertain Days, Certain NightsThe Color Of The RugColor StudyCommon ExpressionDear SusanDifficult WordDonor MentalityDreams Of GirlsEntertaining RayFinal WordsFirst RecitalHard EvidenceHere, Among Old RosesIncomplete ExaminationIsland Of The Raped WomenMan, WomanMarket ResearchMultiple ChoiceOutrageous BehaviorPage 134Parochial AirPerversionThe PlagueProcedural SimilarityRay's SentenceReading MaterialReal LifeSome Lucky GirlsSpotting RayThat She MayThis Will HappenUnpurchased BatteriesVocabulary WordsWhat BacklashWild Ribbons--Table of Poems fromPoem Finder®