A first review out! From Anthony Rintala at Southern Indiana Review who notes, What a shock then that Lynnell Edwards has whetted the teeth, oiled the hinge, and freshened the bait, turning rusted, creaking sexual politics into a real legbreaker. In Covet, femininity becomes a masterful force and fragility a pointed threat. Read the full review here
He excerpts from one of the short sequences in the book, “Instructions for my sons.” The full poem follows:
Instructions for my sons: quit leaving your bikes out at the neighbor’s house
and also propped against the garage door,
scattered in the driveway, the hard frames
screwed into a tangle of spoke and angle;
leaned against the convenience store,
abandoned in the school parking lot,
always unchained, unlocked, unmonitored
while you proceed with other things.
Is it that you don’t care what might
become of them, that you don’t think of their cost,
the effort you took to prime and upgrade
the brakes, the rims, the gears, the shocks?
Or is it that you can’t imagine loss,
any landscape absent
what you love and need?
This world steals.
Its bruising, indiscriminate want robs
the soft places, and wounds. And you —
left with rough sutures, scars,
place that aches in the rain – you
learn to live with what you can’t ever get back,
heart like a broken pedal,
spinning wheel against the sky.
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