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Unraveling the Bed
Mia Leonin
In Unraveling the Bed, Mia Leonin invents a remarkably specific and vertiginous world of veils and magic, blood and azul thinning to translucent, a frightening and tender portrait of a woman who is sometimes barely breathing and, at other times, rising fully into her opaque human self. What is most remarkable to me in these poems is Leonin's craft -- language that is mouth-wateringly rich, whether in line-breaks or prose -- and the way the poems seem to paint themselves before the eyes. I am grateful for this feast of words and for the enormous spirit behind them, and for the complex stories that changed me as I read. To quote Rukeyser... there is an exchange here in which our lives are met, and created. Mia Leonin offers us a work that raises and transforms energy from a deep, wise, and holy place. -- Maureen Seaton, author of Venus Examines Her Breast |
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Braid
Mia Leonin
What an older poet looks for in a first book by a younger poet is intensity of language -- "the startle effect," a term applied to the grasping motion infants instinctually make. It reminds us of our descent from trees, our human nature, our reliance on speech. Reading Mia Leonin's poems makes me newly aware of how we use imagery to save ourselves from falling. Leonin is observant and imaginative. In one instance she is inside the mind of a blind person; in another, an aged woman. The nuances of her environment are not lost on her. Potions and magic spells exert a powerful hold on her work as she struggles to come to terms with her part-Hispanic, part Midwestern background. Some of these poems are oracular, hard to riddle. A few are abstract and defy definition. But on balance this is a lively and engaging first book. -- Maxine Kumin |
