Intimates

the long version

"Provocative and tender, passionate yet wary, the highly charged poems in Helen Farish's first collection testify to the complex nature of relationships with lovers, with family and with the self. The powerful love poems, attuned to the expression of a female erotic, speak openly about the emotional and the sexual; the body itself becomes a rich and compelling site of inquiry." "But the 'intimates', according to 'The Sea Speaks', are also 'disarray and fear'. Posted throughout the collection like sentinels, poems on the death of the poet's father draw her back home where grief mingles with moments of grace or redemption. Whether the encounter concerns sudden loss or sudden blessing, constant throughout is a boldly embodied lyric 'I' voice generously inviting the reader in." "Poised at life's mid-point, these haunting, haunted poems negotiate their emotional freight in carefully crafted forms which mediate between exposure and guardedness. Expertly charting the geographies of love and desire, the histories of emptiness and grief, Intimates introduces a new poet of originality, honesty and singular power."--Jacket.