Girl Hurt

by E.J. Miller Laino

Overview

E.J. Miller Laino is a tough, honest poet. She is liable to say anything. Her poems are startling, from their frank treatment of sex and death to the abundance of hard, true metaphors. This is more than a confrontation with daily pain and fear, however; these poems celebrate survival, the durability of family, the liberation of unheard voices, especially female and working-class voices. The poems of E.J. Miller Laino transcend, with all the power and beauty of flight. —Martín Espada

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781882295074
Publisher:	Alice James Books
Publication date:	11/01/1995
Pages:	72
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

Editorial Reviews

"Her life/ started out as a failed attempt/ to say what was happening to her body," Laino announces in the first poem of this stunning debut collection. Set in a world of factory workers, hostile family members and alcoholics, her poems tell of suicides watched by children, of a baby given up at birth and a fetus sucked from a Catholic womb. Yet there are no victims here; instead the determined voice of a teenager using sex as an escape route: "Anything that took me away from that family,/ dying in silence, from silence, was a good thing." The poems show the speaker exploring anger, disappointment and loss on a difficult journey to maturity. Several pieces brilliantly capture the young child's fear of her mother's death, the mother's warning that her children ``will be the death of me yet'' and then the sudden dying bringing on its unexpected, breathtaking absence. The shorter, lyrical love poems with which the volume ends maintain all the vitality of their predecessors, proving that Laino is no one-theme, one-book poet. Readers will eagerly await her next collection. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly