About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherUniversity Press of Kentucky

ISBN-100813174430

ISBN-139780813174433

eBay Product ID (ePID)237852017

Product Key Features

Book TitleGirl's a Gun : Poems

Number of Pages70 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2017

TopicWomen Authors, Subjects & Themes / Places, General

GenrePoetry

AuthorRachel Danielle Peterson

Book SeriesUniversity Press of Kentucky New Poetry and Prose Ser.

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Weight3.2 Oz

Item Length8.5 in

Item Width5.5 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN2017-042891

Dewey Edition23

TitleLeadingA

ReviewsRachel Danielle Peterson's collection, A Girl's A Gun , reads as part tall tale, part bildungsroman, part geode. These are poems meant to be enclosed in a palm and pressed against the heart. Peterson's strengths are in her cinematic depictions of women, her vibrant imagery, and the precision with which she code-switches into the tongue of the mountains. The heady combination leaves the reader a bit breathless and we plummet with her into a line that feels like proverb, such as in 'Birthday,' 'The heart is cruel/an organ with no song.' These poems do not balk at their own content, circling around love that is tough or risky or absent or misplaced. They press on, lead the way, suggest that there's no way around but through., Wickedly powerful, powerfully wickedPeterson has an honest authority, she wields language like a sharp knife, she cuts clean., With a mouth full of sticky mountain laurel, Appalachian soul liquor, exclamatory verve, iconoclastic Biblical gospel, and tender purchase, Rachel Peterson's A Girl's A Gun cross-talks with a prodigious and prodigal personal and poetic tribe that includes family members, figures from mythology, Jeanne d'Arc, Apollinaire, and a host of hymns and rock ballads. 'Home is in the vocal chords-- / the sound,' she writes in 'Harlan County.' By turns vernacular and soaring with lyricism, Peterson's foray into the emotional violence, Eros, and beauty of the places that hold us, and that we hold inside, evokes another American innovator, Emily Dickinson, who not only felt her life to be a loaded gun but who also, like Peterson, puts language under such unique psychological pressure that it almost seems to be its own tongue., ""Wickedly powerful, powerfully wicked...Peterson has an honest authority, she wields language like a sharp knife, she cuts clean."" -- Michael Dennis, Today's Book of Poetry blog

Dewey Decimal811.6

Table Of ContentPart 1: The Gun Overlook Kentucky Journal Entry #1 Why I Wasn't Supposed to Be Born Journal Entry #2 Burn Journal Entry #3 New Year's Journal Entry #4 Why I Couldn't Marry an Evangelical Journal Entry #5 Elegy of the Gun Love Is the Battlefield A Wish to Die Part 2: The Girl Soldier of God Harlan County The One Saint Joan For Another Dancer Birthday A Memorial of a Memorial Love Song of the Sea-Girl His-story Lessons Canopy The Morrigan Kill the Beast Redbird Acknowledgments Notes

SynopsisHaunting and candid, A Girl's A Gun introduces a poet whose bold voice merges heightened lyricism with compelling narrative. Steeped in storytelling traditions, the poems in Rachel Danielle Peterson's debut collection exhibit linguistic dexterity and mastery of form as the poet mixes lyrical paragraphs, sonnets, and interview-style poems with free verse. Hey Yvonne! The memoree of some strangerhis shoulder's shadow plunges inta our place: thunk, thunk. Run! Mother's vowels pierc, Haunting and candid, A Girl's A Gun introduces a poet whose bold voice merges heightened lyricism with compelling narrative. Steeped in storytelling traditions, the poems in Rachel Danielle Peterson's debut collection exhibit linguistic dexterity and mastery of form as the poet mixes lyrical paragraphs, sonnets, and interview-style poems with free verse. Hey Yvonne! The memoree of some strangerhis shoulder's shadow plunges inta our place: thunk, thunk. Run! Mother's vowels pierce haze. Mother, can we distil the pink threads, fabric, black ball cap, the odor of Bud Light, fills the door she walks through, dust, Mamma. Dust is all we is Taken together, the poems present the coming-of-age story of a girl born in the mountains of rural eastern Kentucky, tracing her journey into a wider world of experience. While the early poems are steeped in Appalachian speech and culture -- a hybrid of a child's diction and regional dialect -- the language shifts as the collection progresses, becoming more standard. The speaker engages with hard issues surrounding gender and violence in contemporary life and explores what it means to be an artist in a culture that favors a literal interpretation of reality. Exploring issues of identity, place, and the call to create, this collection tackles subjects that will shock, touch, and bewilder readers while giving voice to an underrepresented and perhaps even unprecedented perspective in poetry., Haunting and candid, A Girl's A Gun introduces a poet whose bold voice merges heightened lyricism with compelling narrative. Steeped in storytelling traditions, the poems in Rachel Danielle Peterson's debut collection exhibit linguistic dexterity and mastery of form as the poet mixes lyrical paragraphs, sonnets, and interview-style poems with free verse. Hey Yvonne! The memoree of some stranger his shoulder's shadow plunges inta our place: thunk, thunk. Run! Mother's vowels pierce haze. Mother, can we distil the pink threads, fabric, black ball cap, the odor of Bud Light, fills the door she walks through, dust, Mamma. Dust is all we is Taken together, the poems present the coming-of-age story of a girl born in the mountains of rural eastern Kentucky, tracing her journey into a wider world of experience. While the early poems are steeped in Appalachian speech and culture--a hybrid of a child's diction and regional dialect--the language shifts as the collection progresses, becoming more standard. The speaker engages with hard issues surrounding gender and violence in contemporary life and explores what it means to be an artist in a culture that favors a literal interpretation of reality. Exploring issues of identity, place, and the call to create, this collection tackles subjects that will shock, touch, and bewilder readers while giving voice to an underrepresented and perhaps even unprecedented perspective in poetry.

LC Classification NumberPS3616