Cover art by Kikki Ghezzi
Aquamarine
Poetry by Valerie Duff
$18.00
“A precarious balance between physical and emotional existence—at times, harmonious; other times, discordant—resonates at the core of Valerie Duff’s new book, Aquamarine. Each multi-faceted poem crystallizes as if from a cavity below the worldly surface accumulating into compressed, disquieting stories of loss and death—each giving way to the wisdom of the spirit. Through shimmering language charged with acuity and heart, Duff calls on the reader’s senses to affirm life’s mysteries and redemptive lessons without appeasing or sentimentalizing. During a diagnostic ultrasound, she observes the jelly luminescent on my breast. Its Medusa stalks/a wave of supplication, umbrella pulse of dreams.”
Dzvinia Orlowsky, author of Bad Harvest, Silvertone, and Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones
About the Author
Valerie Duff has held fellowships from the VCCA and Writers’ Room of Boston. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, POETRY, Ploughshares, The Common, Great River Review, and elsewhere. Her first book, To the New World (Salmon Poetry, 2010), was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize from Queens University, Belfast. She is currently working in Donor Relations and Stewardship at MIT and is a coach at Hillside Writing.
