Lives Brought to Life
$16.00
Winner of the 2015 Mass Book Award for poetry
At the center of her second book are two islands off the coast of Salem, Massachusetts, through which O’Neil finds the rough terrain of marriage and what it means to love in the face of adversity. She navigates the waters of transition with exuberance and reflection, and discovers new ways to make the ordinary extraordinary.
JANUARY GILL O’NEIL is the author of Underlife, published by CavanKerry Press. She is the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival and an assistant professor of English at Salem State University.
Photo Credit Rachel Eliza Griffiths
O’Neil candidly writes about family . . .of single-motherhood and of love, and in doing so penetrates the exquisiteness of the everyday while also highlighting the challenges of living as artist and mother. Indeed, there is fine balance of imagery and story and song that makes this a fine collection to own, to read back one’s own solitariness, one’s own joy.
— Major Jackson
In her remarkable second book of poems, January Gill O’Neil bravely explores some difficult territory: the world of underpaid and under-appreciated labor, women and their bodies in various states of illness and discovery, the painful process of divorce and its aftermath. But for all the fierce reality, with its attendant grief and occasional anger, there is no lasting misery in Misery Islands. In addition to the pleasures that leap forth at unexpected moments and the “silver linings” of divorce that are the poet’s children, O’Neil’s vivid language and beautifully structured poems make Misery Islands a joy to read.
— Martha Collins
November 2014
78 pp
Trade paper – 6 X 9.25
$16
978-1-933880-46-4
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