Lo maps the deprivation and richness of a rural girlhood and offers an intimate portrait of the woman鈥攖ender, hungry, hopeful鈥攚ho manages to emerge. In a series of lyric odes and elegies, Lo explores the notion that we can be partially constituted by lack鈥攑overty, neglect, isolation. The child in the book鈥檚 early sections is beloved and lonely, cherished and abused, lucky and imperiled, and by leaning into this complexity the poems render a tentative and shimmering space sometimes occluded, the space occupied by a girl coming to find herself and the world beautiful, even as that world harms her.
鈥淢elissa Crowe is a new kind of genius of sensory memory. Mina Loy鈥搇ike, Sappho-seeming, as if those ancient fragments blossomed so many centuries later as lush nerve endings signaling desire, signaling help for the crushed blooms of a childhood betrayed, in a cycle of agonizing poems the book鈥檚 other sections surround as if holding, carefully, even joyfully. Lo is a love song with a haunting melody that thrills me and makes me weep with gratitude.鈥濃擝renda Shaughnessy, judge, 海角乱伦社区Poetry Prize
鈥Lo rides the exclamation and imperative of its title with indefatigable tenderness and dogged reverie and confirms Crowe鈥檚 place as one of contemporary poetry鈥檚 most skilled raconteurs. Crowe knows attention is a kind of love, and her work resonates with the easy hum of concentrated care; what鈥檚 rare, then, is how these finely spun poems carry us through the sweet and the bitter, reviving a buried bravery both necessary and all our own.鈥濃擬eg Day, author, Last Psalm at Sea Level
鈥Lo is a devastatingly gorgeous, sigh-out-loud-every-other-line celebration of the inner life. Like a geode, an ordinary looking rock, Lo insists that there is more鈥攎ore to discover inside or underneath, more in the secreted and unsaid. In these poems, Crowe cracks open the ordinary, the harrowing, even the ugly, to reveal the jewels inside. This book鈥攖his poet鈥攊s a marvel.鈥濃擬aggie Smith, author, Goldenrod
鈥淟辞, a striking collection of poems by Melissa Crowe, is a pick-it-up-and-read-it straight-through collection, an 'OMG, OMG!' page-turner. Crowe takes into consideration the big questions in life as much as the pleasure of small details. . . . must-read collection.鈥濃New York Journal of Books
鈥淚n Melissa Crowe's incandescent second book threats are everywhere, but love and beauty counteract them. Incorporating a variety of forms, this collection of thirty-five affecting autobiographical poems travels from impoverished girlhood to marriage and motherhood in the post-pandemic U.S. . . . In elegies and epithalamiums (poems celebrating marriage), as well as free forms, Crowe honors the family ties that bring her solace, such as her husband and college-bound daughter. . . . Aching loss, teasing sensuality, fear, and wonder at natural beauty: the volume's emotional range is enhanced by alliteration and botanical imagery, with the poet's resilient 'heart a foraged / apple, still green.'鈥濃Shelf Awareness
鈥Lo is compelling, even suspenseful. Each poem pulls us further鈥攊rresistibly鈥攊nto the speaker鈥檚 rural childhood, through the trauma of molestation, and into the complexities of adulthood. . . . the poems capture a feeling I suspect we all share of being haunted鈥攂y different ghosts perhaps, but surely we all have some hovering regret, horror, or fear we鈥檇 love to expel. . . . through their lush details and direct address, the poems invite the reader so emphatically in.鈥濃Mom Egg Review
鈥淭here鈥檚 anger, fear, and sadness in these pages, but there鈥檚 also humor and beauty. In Lo, Crowe has created a deeply human work of art.鈥濃The Shore
From 鈥淕eneral Absolution鈥
Will you know what I mean if I say
we should have designated all the water
holy? I鈥檓 trying to forgive you. And if you鈥檙e
wondering who you are, you鈥檙e everyone.
