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Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-57131-456-7
Pages: 96
Publish Date: December 2012
Genre: Poetry
Odessa
Poems
BY Patricia Kirkpatrick
A grim prognosis, brain cancer, leaves the speaker in Kirkpatrick’s Odessa fighting for her life. The tumor presses against her amygdalae, the “emotional core of the self,” and central to the process of memory. In poems emotionally charged but void of sentimentality, Kirkpatrick creates from loss a dreamlike reality. Odessa, “roof of the underworld,” a refuge at once real and imagined, resembles simultaneously the Midwestern prairie and a mythical god-inhabited city. In lines bearing shades of Classical heroism, Kirkpatrick delivers a personal narrative of stunning dimension.
For Odessa, Kirkpatrick was awarded the first annual Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, which champions emerging Midwestern poets.
BEYOND THE BOOK
• In this interview, Kirkpatrick talks about finding one’s voice through poetic form, the geography of the female body, and crafting myth from Minnesota soil.
• Odessa’s stunning cover art is a monotype made by Patricia Kirkpatrick’s sister, Joey. Find out why it perfectly fits the collection in the artist’s own words.
“These poems ache with the inescapable beauty of landscapes that remind us of human loneliness. This is a remarkably honest and deeply loving collection of poems.”
—Eleanor Lerman
“Kirkpatrick's language is unflinching and beautiful.”
“The verses in Odessa examine with unflinching, plainspoken lyricism those moments when one’s life trajectory is abruptly derailed and its course irrevocably altered."
