American Spikenard
Publication Year: 2007
“If everyone decided to call themselves a girl / that word would stop.” In this award-winning volume of authoritative and assertive poems, Sarah Vap embarks on an emotional journey to the land of America’s female children. Questioning, contradicting, radically and restlessly demanding acceptance, she searches for a way to move from serious girlhood to womanly love. Demonstrating the seriousness of female childhood—which is as dangerous and profound as war, economics, and history, that is, as manhood, in her view—Vap reveals the extremes of self-doubt and self-righteousness inherent in being a contemporary American girl.
“When we’re overcome / by everything we think we love—then by morning / we’re adults.” Just as the oil of American spikenard may provide relief from childhood, so does Sarah Vap provide the kind of holy and extravagant love and honor that can relieve the growing pains of “everyone’s little girl.”
Published by: University of Iowa Press
Series: Iowa Poetry Prize
Cover
Frontmatter
Acknowledgments
With deep gratitude for my teachers Norman Dubie, Beckian Fritz Goldberg, Jeannine Savard, and Cynthia Hogue, for their help with these poems. Thank you to Arizona State University’s creative writing program and to Karla Elling, for giving me the time and the support needed to write this book...
E-ISBN-13: 9781587297724
E-ISBN-10: 1587297728
Print-ISBN-13: 9781587295355
Print-ISBN-10: 1587295350
Page Count: 94
Publication Year: 2007
Edition: pb
Series Title: Iowa Poetry Prize
Series Editor Byline: John Smith, Will Wordsworth
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