Tenuous Chapel

by Melissa Tuckey

A collection of poems. These poems have been widely published in prestigious American literary magazines. Melissa Tuckey's award-winning first book of poems, Tenuous Chapel, was chosen by Charles Simic. It is written in a time of war. Tuckey works in fragments and compressed lyric. Both intimate and worldly, brief poems open into wide spaces. Individual actions have consequences, dichotomies between self and other break down, individuals become part of larger events. At times full of delight, at times devastating, the poems in Tenuous Chapel are subversive. Lovers burst into flame or flower, farmers are eager to return to their fields, small hands are sometimes agile enough to stop the bombs from exploding.

Genres: Poetry

82 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2013

About the author

Melissa Tuckey is the author of Tenuous Chapel (ABZ Press, 2013), winner of the 2012 ABZ First Book Prize, and Rope as Witness, a chapbook published by Puddinghouse Press. She’s received a Fine Arts Work Center residency, among other awards, for her writing. Her poetry has been anthologized in DC Poets Against the War, Fire and Ink: An Anthology of Social Action Writing, Poets for Palestine, Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds: The Teachers of Writers Corps in Poetry and Prose, and Ecopoetry: A Contemporary American Anthology. Melissa is co-translator with Chun Ye and Fiona Sze-Lorrain of Chinese poet Yang Zi’s collected works, which have been published by Conjunctions, Manoa, Witness, and other journals. She serves as Poetry Editor at the online journal "Foreign Policy in Focus" (a think tank without walls). Melissa Tuckey teaches at Ithaca College. She has been with Split This Rock since its inception and served as a founding co-director before joining the Board of Directors.

Reviews

[Yvette Moreno · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing. You may not have heard of Melissa Tuckey, as this is her first book, but if you love poetry, this book should be on your shelf. I was deeply moved again and again.