University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014 eISBN: 978-0-8229-7964-7 | Paper: 978-0-8229-6297-7 Library of Congress Classification PS3612.E559B56 2014 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.6
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Bloom in Reverse chronicles the aftermath of a friend's suicide and the end of a turbulent relationship, working through devastation and loss while on a search for solace that spans from local bars to online dating and beyond to ultimately find true connection and sustaining love. Things move backwards, from death to life, like a reverse time-lapse video of a dead flower morphing from brittle, scorched entity to floral glory to nacsent bud. The poems seek to find those places where the natural world connects to and informs experiences at the core of human relationships, and at times call upon principles and theories from physics and mathematics to describe the complexities of love and loss. It's a book where grief, melancholy, heartbreak, and disillusionment intersect with urban romanticism, hope, possibility, and love. Bloom is all of it, the terrible and the beautiful.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Teresa Leo is the author of the poetry collection The Halo Rule, which won the Elixir Press Editors’ Prize. She is the recipient of a Pew fellowship, a Leeway Foundation grant, two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowships, and the Richard Peterson Poetry Prize from Crab Orchard Review. Her poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She serves on the board of Musehouse, a center for the literary arts in Philadelphia, and works at the University of Pennsylvania.
REVIEWS
“In language both fierce and lovely . . . Leo transforms the suicide of a friend and the end of a relationship into something elegiac and moving. Using a sort of reverse chronology, Leo (The Halo Rule) writes poems that begin in loss and death and finish in revival and renewal . . . This is a deeply meaningful book that has something for all readers.” —Library Journal
“In the aftermath of a friend’s suicide, Teresa Leo’s speaker mourns, while attempting, out of forced necessity, to find life within death. The poems move like children led by an unknown hand through a dark hallway—trusting, yet questioning. In ‘Bloom in Reverse,’ Leo reveals that healing comes from the world pulling forward, matched with our ability to follow, to receive a hand, regardless of our understanding.”
—Coal Hill Review
"From the dedication page, Teresa Leo's 'Bloom in Reverse' props itself against the fence between the living and the dead. Dedicated to the living but in memory of Leo's friend Sarah, the poems carry the dual burden of trauma and memory. How do we process, how do we articulate trauma? If we're at all like Leo, we recognize that in art, in poetry, we remember the Sarahs of the world and bring them into a collective consciousness. She is not forgotten. . . .[This collection] brings old hurts to the surface, no matter how long you've buried the memories of your own grief, but it reminds us that memory, in the end, is all we have. You can't bring them back, but you can choose to remember." —Cleaver Magazine
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
I. No
Confession
The Fifth Vital Sign
Suicide Is a Mind Stripping Petals off Flowers
“Eating Is an Act of Optimism”
She Said: It’s Not That Things Bring Us to Tears,
but Rather, There Are Tears in Things
Memory Is a Kind of Broken Promise
Bronze
Poem for a Troubled Room
Fly Haiku
Virginia Farm Haunting
Metempsychosis
I Have Drinks with My Dead Friend’s Ex-Boyfriend
After Twelve Months, Someone Tells Me It’s Time
to Join the Living
II. Wolves in Shells
Into the Salvage Yard
Home Is a Four-Letter Word
Golden Ratio
Mausoleum of the Unfixable
Split Screen
Constant
Your Rose Bush
Last Call Sestina
Transemotional
Daylilies
III. Hidden Wings
Miniature
Chaos Theory
My Friend Asks What I’ve Been Doing Lately,
and by This She Means Men
Poem Ending with Six Words from a Women’s
Room Stall
Mechanical Reproduction
Online Dating
Earth, Hair, Fire, Water
New York City
The Heart Has the Capacity to Break
and Reset a Million Times
IV. Passenger
Elegy, Two Years Later
The Exactness of Birds
Ex as CSI Episode
Nine Man
And Then You
The Last Good Man
Hooke’s Law
Force
Love as the Circle-to-Land Approach
Horseshoe Crabs
Advice for a Dying Fern
Acknowledgments
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
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Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014 eISBN: 978-0-8229-7964-7 Paper: 978-0-8229-6297-7
Bloom in Reverse chronicles the aftermath of a friend's suicide and the end of a turbulent relationship, working through devastation and loss while on a search for solace that spans from local bars to online dating and beyond to ultimately find true connection and sustaining love. Things move backwards, from death to life, like a reverse time-lapse video of a dead flower morphing from brittle, scorched entity to floral glory to nacsent bud. The poems seek to find those places where the natural world connects to and informs experiences at the core of human relationships, and at times call upon principles and theories from physics and mathematics to describe the complexities of love and loss. It's a book where grief, melancholy, heartbreak, and disillusionment intersect with urban romanticism, hope, possibility, and love. Bloom is all of it, the terrible and the beautiful.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Teresa Leo is the author of the poetry collection The Halo Rule, which won the Elixir Press Editors’ Prize. She is the recipient of a Pew fellowship, a Leeway Foundation grant, two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowships, and the Richard Peterson Poetry Prize from Crab Orchard Review. Her poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She serves on the board of Musehouse, a center for the literary arts in Philadelphia, and works at the University of Pennsylvania.
REVIEWS
“In language both fierce and lovely . . . Leo transforms the suicide of a friend and the end of a relationship into something elegiac and moving. Using a sort of reverse chronology, Leo (The Halo Rule) writes poems that begin in loss and death and finish in revival and renewal . . . This is a deeply meaningful book that has something for all readers.” —Library Journal
“In the aftermath of a friend’s suicide, Teresa Leo’s speaker mourns, while attempting, out of forced necessity, to find life within death. The poems move like children led by an unknown hand through a dark hallway—trusting, yet questioning. In ‘Bloom in Reverse,’ Leo reveals that healing comes from the world pulling forward, matched with our ability to follow, to receive a hand, regardless of our understanding.”
—Coal Hill Review
"From the dedication page, Teresa Leo's 'Bloom in Reverse' props itself against the fence between the living and the dead. Dedicated to the living but in memory of Leo's friend Sarah, the poems carry the dual burden of trauma and memory. How do we process, how do we articulate trauma? If we're at all like Leo, we recognize that in art, in poetry, we remember the Sarahs of the world and bring them into a collective consciousness. She is not forgotten. . . .[This collection] brings old hurts to the surface, no matter how long you've buried the memories of your own grief, but it reminds us that memory, in the end, is all we have. You can't bring them back, but you can choose to remember." —Cleaver Magazine
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
I. No
Confession
The Fifth Vital Sign
Suicide Is a Mind Stripping Petals off Flowers
“Eating Is an Act of Optimism”
She Said: It’s Not That Things Bring Us to Tears,
but Rather, There Are Tears in Things
Memory Is a Kind of Broken Promise
Bronze
Poem for a Troubled Room
Fly Haiku
Virginia Farm Haunting
Metempsychosis
I Have Drinks with My Dead Friend’s Ex-Boyfriend
After Twelve Months, Someone Tells Me It’s Time
to Join the Living
II. Wolves in Shells
Into the Salvage Yard
Home Is a Four-Letter Word
Golden Ratio
Mausoleum of the Unfixable
Split Screen
Constant
Your Rose Bush
Last Call Sestina
Transemotional
Daylilies
III. Hidden Wings
Miniature
Chaos Theory
My Friend Asks What I’ve Been Doing Lately,
and by This She Means Men
Poem Ending with Six Words from a Women’s
Room Stall
Mechanical Reproduction
Online Dating
Earth, Hair, Fire, Water
New York City
The Heart Has the Capacity to Break
and Reset a Million Times
IV. Passenger
Elegy, Two Years Later
The Exactness of Birds
Ex as CSI Episode
Nine Man
And Then You
The Last Good Man
Hooke’s Law
Force
Love as the Circle-to-Land Approach
Horseshoe Crabs
Advice for a Dying Fern
Acknowledgments
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE