This House My Bones - Elmaz Abinader

This House My Bones by Elmaz Abinader

Paperback 

2014 Editor's Choice, Willow Books. "The conversation with history is witnessed by the earth and etches the collisions on its body—every rock and road, riverbed and meadow hold the marks of migrations, escapes, exiles, alienations, aging and evolutions. In This House, My Bones, the body and the earth exchange their positions and perspectives. The memories of war are on the skin as well as on the mesa, the exile is written in dust and cells. Through mining experience of occupation, dislocation, and aging, I created poems where the body and the earth examine their bruises. The poems were influenced by the words of Adrienne Rich, the experiences in Palestine of myself and others, and from my own meditation of the DNA of history and its shifts." ~ Elmaz Abinader

Praise for This House, My Bones:

“In poems of grace and a searing fire, Elmaz Abinader negotiates love, yearning, hope, memory, resistance, injustice and death and weaves an uneasy but authentic hope that illuminates the path to a true redemption. A stunning collection.”

~Chris Abani, author of Sanctificum and The Secret History of Las Vegas

“This House, My Bones is a gorgeously scripted chronicle that probes the collective heart and the countries we inhabit when we dare to speak out loud. There's an insistent rhythm in these stanzas, a lyricism of light and lineage stamped with the undeniable signature of a poet at the height of her craft. Savor these poems, and be lifted by their music.”

~Patricia Smith, Author of Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the 2013 Lenore Marshal Poetry Prize