Teratology
Susannah Nevison

Winner of the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize

This rich debut collection explores the psychic states compelled by physical imperfection or abnormality. Set in vivid yet unsure spaces, like those between consciousness and anesthesia or dream, Susannah Nevison’s poems name and reclaim the body, making and unmaking it, portraying the “marvelous monsters” that we all are—whether outside or in. Unflinching and brave, Teratology marks the emergence of a highly imaginative and compassionate poetic voice.

“Teratology is a dynamic and beautifully hewn collection of poems.... Redolent images create a past and a present that must cope with an underlying uncertainty about what experiences of and within the body make one less than human, make one superhuman.”
—Foreword Reviews

“In this gorgeous collection, the body is subject to constant revision and transformation—sometimes into a toy, shaped and manipulated; at other times into birds, into water, into fire that cleanses and destroys, into ‘whole orchards bloom[ing] from ash.’ Though these poems begin in anguish and trauma, their movement and gesture is always and ever toward song, through which it is possible for a damaged body to find freedom, even rapture.”—Katharine Coles

Susannah Nevison received the American Literary Review poetry prize and an Academy of American Poets/Larry Levis prize for her work. Her poems and criticism have appeared in or are forthcoming from Ninth Letter, American Literary Review, Southern Indiana Review, diode, Cider Press Review, and elsewhere. She is a doctoral candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah, where she also teaches.

Paperback/ $15.95 (Can $17.95) / ISBN 978-0-89255-458-4 / 54 pages / Poetry

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