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by Catherine Esposito Prescott (Author)
From the prize-winning author of Accidental Garden, Superbloom follows the path of unfathomable grief and a parent's enduring connection.
"Superbloom by Catherine Esposito Prescott is not merely a book of poems-it is a quiet act of devotion. In language both luminous and precise, Prescott traces the contours of unimaginable loss and transforms grief into something tender, reverent, and enduring. Like light filtered through stained glass, each poem refracts sorrow into unexpected hues of remembrance and renewal. Rooted in the natural world, both on Earth and beyond, these poems offer a sacred mirror that reflects the eternal bond between parent and child. Again and again, Superbloom provides the reader with moments in which unbearable absence becomes presence-where, as she writes, 'Memories bubble up inside of me, each a pocket / of joy, iridescent and light, ' and even the deepest pain is made to shimmer-with faith, with radiance, with grace."
-Caridad Moro-Gronlier
Author of Tortillera
"Catherine Esposito Prescott's Superbloom is a heart-rending tour of mother-grief. In this carefully calibrated examination of what it feels like to live past the loss of a child grown in one's own body, Prescott find grace and faith, a tenderness almost shocking in the face of a loss so powerful its gravity could easily become a black hole of pain and anger. These poems insist on the continuity of all living beings, refusing Dylan Thomas's rage, and supposing that Whitman may be right when he says 'there is really no death, ' but of course, there is death, her son's death, and the power of this collection is that it keeps both him and her in this world, held firm by each reader lucky enough to open this book."
-Jason Schneiderman
Author of Self Portrait of Icarus as a Country on Fire
"In its intricately-patterned braiding of meditations on love, loss, everyday happiness and profound grief, Catherine Esposito Prescott's Superbloom is one of the most courageous and moving books of poems I've read in years. Employing ordinary language to reach beyond the ordinary into the realms of elegy and prayer, these poems evoke a kind of transformation, allowing us to glimpse that place where grief opens to the possibility if not the realization of miracle. At their core, these are hymns of gratitude: 'My heart is dust, ' Esposito Prescott writes, 'but nothing is unbeautiful here.'"
-Michael Hettich
Author of A Sharper Silence
"Written during a year of seismic transformation, Catherine Esposito Prescott's poems are studies in patience and grace-poems that ask how the human spirit continues, the 'updraft of it, in the reel and pull of it, ' and how love reshapes what remains. These poems, lush, lyrical, and fiercely tender, transform grief into an art of awareness, a 'theater of hope.' Catherine's is the voice of a confidant, talking truths and what-ifs. Between science and religion, is another wisdom, one of a mother. Beautiful and brutal and sawing and singing, these poems brought me to my knees."
-Alexandra Lytton Regalado
Author of Relinquenda: Poems (National Poetry Series)
