Publisher's Synopsis
Poetry. Women's Studies. In powerful, invigorating verse, Erin Slaughter relates the struggle of finding oneself in the modern day. In the span of a year, she falls deeply in love for the first time; establishes a strong, close-knit group of friends; loses both; and slowly learns to deal with that loss and the depression that comes with it. Slaughter's poetry comes alive with passion, fury, and hope in a world that often tears us down.
This book is grimoire, is grain silo, is Americana and marginalia, is a hotel room across state lines. Slaughter gleans and gathers up deliciousness: ashes and gin, winged liner, bleach, blackberry throb, tootsie rolls, dirty martinis, cheese shards and a deer carcass, a store-bought orchid, a peeled ankle. Soak yourself in this work, its every sensationâ like flesh falling off the rib, vicious and bittersweet. I WILL TELL THIS STORY TO THE SUN UNTIL YOU REMEMBER YOU ARE THE SUN is not to be missedâ o 'horrible brightness, ' o 'lovelaced void, ' a 'radiating dark' that will have you hollering yes. Oh hell yes.â Emily Corwin 'Forgiveness, your mouth / is the wet hungering mouth of the world / & its hungering for itself, ' writes Erin Slaughter in her collection I WILL TELL THIS STORY TO THE SUN UNTIL YOU REMEMBER YOU ARE THE SUN. The speaker here is the 'actor in [her] own quiet being, ' and in her full-bodied inhabitation of difficult inheritances, fraught beauties, and inevitable losses. These are poems of praise and consolation, of gratitude and grief; they reach toward hope even as they note the kindnesses we offer to the 'small, cruel moments [that] will ruin us.' Slaughter's poems brim with musicality and keen vision. They linger in a moment when we are not quite enough for one another and when we are all each other has.â Paula Cisewski
