Montgomery, Judith H.-Litany for Wound and Bloom
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978-0-9998334-1-4
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In language both direct and ravishing, Judith H. Montgomery's Litany for Wound and Bloom explores the joys and terrors of motherhood as well as women's identities in the context of a violent, modern world. A delight to ear and eye, this book is a celebration of the beauty of breath that overrides loss.
Photo of Judith H. Montgomery (c) Loretta Slepikas
RELEASED AUGUST, 2018
In language both direct and ravishing, Judith H. Montgomery's Litany for Wound and Bloom explores the joys and terrors of motherhood as well as women's identities in the context of a violent, modern world. A delight to ear and eye, this book is a celebration of the beauty of breath that overrides loss.
"Invoking that radiant / litany as bandage" is what Judith Montgomery does again and again throughout this luminous collection. These are poems of love and loss, poems about what it's like to be a woman today. Montgomery writes about "the burden / of mothering my mother," "who floated me inside / the bowl of her body" and she writes about the blessings of sons. I've never read better descriptions of a woman's cycle ("scarlet garden" "rich red bed") or of the fears of middle life: "the nebula // burst in the mammogram," "a gene's crooked stitch." Montgomery makes us consider "the shine and flow of ordinary / oxygen and light," both of them miracles we take for granted. But we never will again after reading this extraordinary book.
~Barbara Crooker author of Les Fauves and Barbara Crooker: Selected Poems Vertical Divider
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Litany: a liturgical prayer with responses; an incantatory recital. Judith Montgomery’s Litany for Wound and Bloom reads like prayer or incantation. In lush language with close attention to craft, the poet addresses intense topics ranging from personal loss to public tragedy. Of surgery to overcome infertility, she writes “To bloom... / first she must be wounded.” In this collection even yellow jackets are made beautiful with “gold-ringed eyes, lace-membranous wings” as they “dabbled dark feet in cut / peaches.” In this beautiful book, poems reverberate like music.
~Penelope Scambly Schott author of A is for Anne and The Perfect Mother |
"Written at the height of her strength, Judith Montgomery’s fourth collection, Litany for Wound and Bloom, draws liberally on her overflowing poetic toolbox. In this collection’s unerring sense of form, line breaks reveal the ambiguity of language, and refrains invite the reader to hear songs as well as creating drama, as in the haunting repetition of “If the moon had been tatter and fog” in “Listen.” Her musical ear tuned to perfection, she is unflinching in her depictions of violence across cultures, yet the darkness of her subjects never impinges on her commitment to making art, and to wooing the reader with language, as in the hard-hitting “B-Word,” written after the Brussels bombings: “Bodies littering a shattered airport/(apartment, corner deli . . . ) floor. Breached/security, then bleed-out. Bandage: blanket//grabbed to wrap a burned body. Because/break. Blow. Boast. Border. Brothers./Brandish. Bang. And body count.”
~Judith Barrington
author of Horses and the Human Soul, Trying to be an Honest Woman, and Lost Lands
~Judith Barrington
author of Horses and the Human Soul, Trying to be an Honest Woman, and Lost Lands
Read a Poem from Litany for Wound and Bloom:
"Her Silence Is" (first printed in Persimmon Tree (2009); Persimmon Tree Prize for Poetry
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Reviews:
Read Amy Miller's review of Litany for Wound and Blood on Cider Press Review
Read Diane Lockward's review of Litany for Wound and Bloom on Amazon.
Read Julie L. Moore's review of Litany for Wound and Bloom on Mom Egg Review
Read Catherine McGuire's review of Litany for Wound and Bloom on Oregon Poetry Association.