Sign-In
Cart
On the Subject of Blackberries
Paperback
Publisher Price: $14.95
ISBN13: 9781947879843
Publisher: Raw Dog Screaming Press
Published: Oct 21 2024
Pages: 120
Weight: 0.35
Height: 0.28 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Welcome to the garden. Here we poison our fruits, pierce ourselves with thorns, and transform under the light of the full moon. Mad and unhinged, we fall through rabbit holes, walk willingly into fairy rings, and dance in the song of witchcraft, two snakes around our ankles, the juice of berries on our tongues.
Inspired by Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, these poems are meditations on female rage, postpartum depression, compulsion, and intrusive thoughts. They pull from periods of sleep deprivation, soul exhaustion, and nightmarish delusions, and each is left untitled, a nod to the stream-of-conscious mind of a new mother.
Using found poetry and under the influence of bibliomancy, Wytovich harnesses the occult power of her imagery and words and aligns it with a new, more vulnerable, darkness. These pieces are not only visions of the madwoman in the attic, but ghostly visitations that explore the raw mental torture women sometimes experience after giving birth.
This collection heals as much as it scars, and is an honest look at how trauma seeps into the soil of our bodies. Her poems are imagined horrors, fictional fears, and all the unspoken murmurs of a mind lost between reality and dream. What she leaves in her wake is nothing short of horror-the children lost, the garden dead, the women feral, ready to pounce.
Advance Praise
...an uncomfortable collection. Petal-pressed and pulsing with politeness, her poetry is unflinching in its honesty, each poem a bewitchingly beautiful slurp at the horror of motherhood. A devastating work. -Lee Murray, co-author of Tortured Willows
...a birth announcement, a lullaby, a eulogy. It is the beautiful, yet painful tangled parts of transformation. Wytovich conjures a sympathetic magic spell, and stands firm as one of the masters of speculative poetry. -Cynthia Pelayo, Crime Scene
Dark, lovely, and brutal, these poems are a tribute to Shirley Jackson and a hymn for the inner Blackwood sister who resides in all of us. Fans of gothic horror will devour Wytovich's stunning collection in one sitting.-Jessica Drake-Thomas, Burials and Bad Omens
Once again, Stephanie M. Wytovich knocks it out of the park with her inimitable poetry. Everything I'd hoped it would be and more. -Gwendolyn Kiste, Reluctant Immortals
1 different editions
Also available
Also from
Wytovich, Stephanie M.
A Conjuring for All Seasons: An Anthology of Witch Lore
Wytovich, Stephanie M.
Coles, Donyae
Kulski, K. P.
Paperback
Devolution Z: The Horror Magazine August 2015
Wytovich, Stephanie M.
Yadlosky, Kyle
Turnbull, David
Paperback
Also in
General Poetry
Dante's Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay
Pitavy, Francois
Alighieri, Dante
Paperback
Sounding the Seasons Enlarged Edition: One Hundred and Ten Sonnets for the Christian Year
Guite, Malcolm
Paperback
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Lao Tzu
Paperback
They Bloom Because of You: Poems on the Infinite Love, Growth, and Magic of Motherhood
Urlichs, Jessica
Paperback
Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement
Plath, Sylvia
Paperback
This Is the Main Event: Discovering the Life You Long for in the Life You Have
Smith, Joshua Luke
Hardcover