Advance
Praise
"Acts
of Contortion is a first book of great urgency, a scorching
protest against human suffering. I am deepened immeasurably by
this work that struggles to make connections and transfigure
losses, these beautifully made poems—contorted acts!—that
hum with the music of compassion."
—Edward Hirsch
"
Reading Anna Meek's sensual and eloquent Acts of Contortion
is like listening to a great symphony. Fragments from the first
bars reappear, subside, disappear, and return us once again to
her deepest perception—that the body is an instrument of
truth. Sometimes the body is lucky, and expresses itself through
the music of the violin, or through the production of passionate
speech or poetry. But sometimes the body can do nothing but break
open in the face of violence—in birth, in pain, in death.
These exquisitely crafted poems are unflinching in their honesty,
reaffirming precision over approximation as the human ideal."
—Maura Stanton
"From
its opening paean to the human hand, to its final sequence's
circus contortionist who ‘twists . . . bearing / down into
her chest like a cellist,’ Anna Meek's fine first book
returns continually to the world of the flesh, its wonders and
woes, where ‘the skin cries with love,’ and the abused
seek shelter, and a woman pregnant with twins feels how ‘her
generous body aspires to open.’ But these poems are smart
and sly as well as sensual. They attempt to be true to the fullness
of our condition, and they leave us feeling ultimately that we've
been in . . . well, good hands."
—Albert Goldbarth
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