November, November - by Isabella Wang (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Written across the span of four Novembers, this collection delivers a send-off to "loved poets" who are no longer with us.

Dedicated as letters and long epistolary lyrics to those who are missing a loved one, November, November acknowledges poetry's "palpitating vulnerable form," and how sometimes a poem might be the only comfort that resides between silence and grief.

Isabella Wang's second collection began as a tribute to the late Phyllis Webb, and was completed in the aftermath of Wang's cancer diagnosis. The poems respond directly to Webb's work and collapse the fine landscapes separating death and Wang's own mortality. Over the course of treatment and "days [when] we don't get to rewrite the history of our bodies," the pace of Wang's poetry slows down in the complicated recovery from cancer. Entering the cloudless silver of November days, her words tell a story of loss and illness, and her poems linger in the cold air, visible.

Review Quotes

Praise for Isabella Wang's Pebble Swing:

"bittersweet and sensuous debut... Wang offers a persuasive glimpse at how history can illuminate the future." --Publishers Weekly

"In the way that a pebble seems to swing across the water when tossed, Isabella Wang explores the transient space between the seasons of growing up." --Seattle Book Review