girl in tree bark

In Kelly DuMar’s girl in tree bark, the past, especially the life of the family of origin, acts as a kind of sap that provides nutrients for the photosynthesis that charges the poems. But the poems send their salubrious nourishment down to the past, which becomes transformed with the poem-making. The effect of the past on the present, and vice-versa, is not static; it is a reciprocally kinetic symbiosis, played out in fluent, daring narratives, in language keen with insight and liquid with sumptuous musicality. In almost every poem, a coupling of devastation and healing works a remarkable magic. — Tom Daley, author of House You Cannot Reach