In Both Hands
by Joannie Stangeland

Description

In this fourth collection (her second with Ravenna Press), Joannie Stangeland relentlessly, relentlessly constructs a mythopoetic world that is persistently doubled. Persistently broken. And filled with a very quiet violence. It’s not that Stangeland doesn’t love our world, but its stories “crumble under surf.” Its gods and ghosts won’t go away. And its reflections, doppelgangers, palimpsests, and halves make us ask, again and again: Is this book a healing—or is this book a rending. It is perfectly and painfully both—“The sky” she tells us “mends itself. At the seam between worlds.” (Sarah Vap)