Love Prodigal

Traci Brimhall

Forthcoming November 2024

Fiercely self-aware and “utterly present tense,” Traci Brimhall’s Love Prodigal lives in the messiness of starting over. As Brimhall grieves a divorce and a new diagnosis, cycles of loss, heartbreak, family trauma, and chronic illness appear. There is an urge to detach, to go numb. Yet, pain is always returned as a gift—the beautiful vulnerability of feeling. In conversation with Da Vinci, Shakespeare, and Bachelard, images of the phoenix appear throughout the collection; its metaphor promises an easy and endless cycle of rebirth—a forever life, forever alone. Brimhall rejects this idea, instead reaching for the slow, messy, and imperfect process of healing. 

ISBN: 9781556597022

Format: Paperback

About the Author

Known for her frequent marriage of the ordinary with the surreal, Traci Brimhall is the author of Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod (2020); Saudade (2017); Our Lady of the Ruins (2012), selected by Carolyn Forché for the Barnard Women Poets Prize; and Rookery (2010), selected by Michelle Boisseau for the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award and finalist for the Foreword Book of the Year Award. Her work has received a Pushcart Prize, and she …

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Reviews

“An intense flow of loose-limbed, vividly imagined, and deeply felt poems. . . . Brimhall addresses life’s everyday suffering in astonishing language that will attract a wide range of readers. Highly recommended.”—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal, STARRED review