A Case for Solace
Poetry collection by Liz Ahl
$18.00
Praise for A Case for Solace
“The sadness in Liz Ahl’s brilliant and patient book does more than dampen and inhabit the house and the heart; this sorrow strengthens community in a time of emotional isolation. Even our own bodies suffer losses, or threaten to, and more than once the poems catalogue these near misses which tether us more fiercely to each other and this world: “So tonight, little brother, I grab / your pale love-handle and jab you with a syringe / meant to thin out the crowds throbbing / deep inside your calf …. // and of course you’re the first person / I’ve ever injected with anything.” These poems anchor themselves in the hollow that grief creates, and remind us that meaningful solace is not something we sit back and wait to receive, but is something we build for each other, deliberately and with great care.
Ann Hudson, author of Glow and The Armillary Sphere
About the Author
Liz Ahl is the author of Beating the Bounds (Hobblebush Books, 2017), as well as the chapbooks Home Economics and Talking About The Weather (Seven Kitchens Press), Luck (Pecan Grove Press), and A Thirst That’s Partly Mine, which won the 2007 Slapering Hol Press chapbook prize. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, most recently in Limp Wrist, Lavender Review, Quartet Literary Journal, Able Muse, Rogue Agent, West Trestle Review, and Moist Poetry Journal. Her work has also been featured in various anthologies, including Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan, and Show Us Your Papers. She teaches writing at Plymouth State University and lives in Holderness, New Hampshire.
