Double Jinx

“Nancy Reddy is a live wire who uses a knife-tip focus and intellect to filigree, with raw exactitude, issues of femininity and the domestic. Reddy’s range—the familial, fairy tale, myth and theology, popular culture—allow her poems to unravel and embody the seething mystery, the metamorphosis, the often inherent violence in womanhood… . Palpable with disquiet, the absolute clarity of these poems will haunt the reader. Double Jinx is a brilliant first book, profound and fierce.”

“Nancy Reddy’s exquisitely crafted poems perform an exploration of woman’s manifold selves. Using the conceit of the stage, intimate spaces—family, home, the love letter—are lit ‘bright as a spotlight’ by the poet’s eye, compelling us to examine questions of self-identity, desire, and escape. Double Jinx is a book that holds its audience spellbound.”

“Double Jinx is a sprawling landscape shaped and reshaped by unpredictable and uncontrollable forces—namely, violence and desire. At the same time, the book tempers its storms with darkly tender and nostalgic moments, revealing a human world in which docility wrestles with ferocity, in which each person wears many masks and costumes because performance is a means of survival. Soon the domestic and the wild become indistinguishable. Nancy Reddy is the most deft of magicians.”

“Double Jinx is an absolute delight. With enormous imaginative energy, this book offers ‘a chorus of girls,’ from daughter to sister to wife, from Nancy Drew to the girls in fairy tales, and from a beauty queen to a girl who lives in a terrarium. A genealogy of girlhood, Nancy Reddy’s book has the power to enchant just as it unsettles.”

“In her debut collection, Nancy Reddy plays with a variety of forms as she weaves sharp images and dark narratives about femininity, faith, and family… . She channels the vibe and energy of Plath and Sexton, but it’s her arresting language that’s the real draw here.”