Leave Me a Little Want - by Beverly Burch (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

In Burch's fourth poetry collection, Leave Me a Little Want, there is ferocious energy and tension in each poem as it fearlessly asks, "What are we doing/on this wild planet?" I love this book and its urgent attention to language and form in the "treacherous province" of our current times. Burch never turns away from the coexistence of the beautiful and the bloody, the tedious and the risky, and so I not only trust her, but feel jolted awake. In the words of Emily Dickinson, Burch is that writer "out with lanterns looking for herself," always conscious that she has briefly slipped through the "blessed aperture" into this world and, too soon, must slip out again.

-Julia Levine

Review Quotes

Beverly Burch winds us through the past and the natural world with so much hunger on the edge of bloom-where splendor and grief bloom together as well as separately. Leave Me a Little Want is rich with imagery, sonnets, broken sonnets, and a distinct voice questioning throughout: How do things just disappear? How will I face dying? Does the earth still want us? You will discover the answers if you listen to these poems that whisper and sing. It's all in here-confetti sunsets, sweet tranquility, lemony light, three goldfinch in the lavender-beauty is everywhere in these poems with Burch making sure we have everything we need, and yes, Reader, she is that good, she will never leave you wanting.

-Kelli Russell Agodon

Beverly Burch's beautiful book is full of deeply sensory and shape-shifting sonnets. Each line is full of the world's heft, its hustled minutes, and its urgent joys. In imperatives and questions, riddles and rumors, and unholy green born again in mud, Burch shakes us awake with each line. Every day and every heartbeat is full of beauty and meaning here, and we are lucky enough to see the seasons through Burch's thoughtful and rapturous attention.

-Traci Brimhall