“The poems gathered in Other Words For Grief, are a spotlight turned inward. As Lisa Marie Rollins relentlessly searches the interior with a hot light scanning blood and baby pictures; sexual encounters nearly gone awry as well as family encounters that fall short, we are moved through her fantastic string of action: ‘What I know is black bodies are dropping. Crickets after the crop duster flies overhead. Mist to inhale and wrap our little shells so we disappear from the land quietly. What if his body was already coated in blood from watching reels and reels and miles and miles of footage of black bodies falling.’ Here is activity that not only provides detailed motion of an experience, but Rollins also elevates the moment, and brilliantly leads us to fully see ourselves, ‘this is how you call impossible/ ideas into being […] this is how you light candle spells. this is how you be.’ Other Words For Grief is a consuming debut that asks the hard questions one rather avoid, but leaves us better off than where we started, ‘so all we need do now is raise the dead.'” –F. Douglas Brown

Adoptee Author: Lisa Marie Rollins

Publication Year: 2018



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