The Body Wars

Reviews / Votes

Beatty writes taut poems, and much like muscles tightening up when danger is sensed there is a tension in her best work that feels like her lines are on the verge of snapping. * Pittsburgh Post-Gazette * Jan Beatty's visceral urgency and courageous truth-telling is a gust of welcome fresh air. These poems are astoundingly alive! -- Tracy K. Smith, 26th U.S. Poet Laureate * Words in the Water * What would it be like to be stormless?" asks Jan Beatty early in The Body Wars, a collection riddled with bullets and natural disasters: fire storms, bush fires, fire tornadoes, flash floods, "deranged air." Man-made disasters, too: the heroin crisis, the aids pandemic, "Trump Care." But it is in the midst of crisis that Beatty finds her strength as artist, as witness, as poet. This is not a book that offers answers; rather, it offers important questions: "can I tell you that we mourned?" And "are there too many drowned trees?" These are the questions we all must be asking "as we crack into the mad ocean." What an extraordinary book. -- D.A. Powell * Repast: Tea, Lunch, Cocktails * Jan Beatty is my essential writer, whose work always makes me feel less alone and less afraid. She is fierce, fearless, harnessing a fury that is particular as it is familiar. Her startling imagery and dignified line hold that energy tight. When I think of Jan's poetry I think-reliably and unapologetically feminist, unflinching especially in terms of violence, poverty, and sex in which women are subjects rather than objects. -- Denise Duhamel