Ruin - Softcover

Cruz, Cynthia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1882295587 ISBN 13: 9781882295586

Publisher: Alice James Books, 2006

Synopsis

Reader, take heed: These are no ordinary poems about childhood. In a series of secular prayers, Cynthia Cruz alludes to a girlhood colored by abuse and a brother’s death. A beautifully understated sense of menace and damage pervades this vivid, nonlinear tale.

About this title

About the Author:

Cynthia Cruz was born in Germany and raised in Northern California. She holds degrees from Mills College (B.A.) and Sarah Lawrence College (M.F.A.), and has received numerous residencies to Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. Her poems have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

January”

A California of snow and the surprise
Of illness. I throned myself in the white
Noise of its silence and watched as the world
Fell away. All the silver flickerings of possibility
Going out like the sound of horse hooves
Clicking into the distance. It is almost
The end. Anesthesia of medicine and me,
Beneath its warm bell of milk. My girlhood was
Microscopic: a locked window overlooking the
Sea. An atlas of the disaster: an un-lit hall and
A shift in the waves of the field. Blue bedside
Porcelain. Michelle, my little sister, silent as
A weed. I took all the things I loved and
Smashed them one by one.

About this edition

• Publisher: Alice James Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1882295587
• ISBN 13: 9781882295586
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80