Published in 2013
96 pages
Lynn Melnick was born in Indianapolis and grew up in Los Angeles. Her poetry has appeared in BOMB, DENVER QUARTERLY, Guernica, Gulf Coast, jubilat, The Paris Review, A Public Space, and elsewhere. Her fiction has appeared in Opium and Forklift, Ohio, and she has written essays and book reviews for Boston Review, Coldfront, Los Angeles Review of Books, Poetry Daily, and VIDAweb, among others. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.
What is this book about?
“The title of Melnick’s stunning book is a microcosm of the poems within—the uncertainty of if I should say followed by the defiance of I have hope. Her poems follow moments of unmooredness (I am best / when I dabble in consciousness and a soundly / spinning room) with blinding insight (You wouldn’t know happy if it kissed you on the mouth)—tiptoeing followed by a kick to the head. On the melancholy-go-round of these poems, there’s a swan-seat for sadness but also a tiger called Beauty and a horse called Hope. The unexpected music and syntax of Melnick’s work will make you want to ride/read it again and again.”
– Matthea Harvey
