Braving the Body

by Diane Seuss, Nicole Callahan (editor)

Genres: Poetry

239 pages, Paperback

Published January 27, 2024

About the author

Diane Seuss was born in Indiana and raised in Michigan. She earned a BA from Kalamazoo College and an MSW from Western Michigan University. Her work has appeared in Poetry, the Georgia Review, Brevity, Able Muse, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and the Missouri Review, as well as The Best American Poetry 2014. She was the MacLean Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English at Colorado College in 2012, and she has taught at Kalamazoo College since 1988.

Reviews

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 5 out of 5]

An anthology of poems about the body from a diverse group of poets and voices.

from All the Women I Know Are Writing Post-Roe Poems by Sonia Greenfield: "Sometimes, before we knew / any better, we would try to save men who were / lodged in the birth canal of perpetual infancy, / and we decided in a rare moment of clarity / we would give them anything but our days"

from My Mother Approves by Benjamin S. Grossberg: "She always said / when she died I would have it / but almost certainly never pictured me wearing it: / how it would lie an inch / below my beard, in the hollow / between my clavicles"

from Sex, Suddenly, Everywhere by Jessica Jacobs: "My body cried out for armor. Big boned, / broad shouldered, I was built for it: forced into a dress with shoulder pads, / I was the 90's littlest linebacker."

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m thrilled to be one of the 116 poets represented in this sweeping anthology about living in a human body with all the cultural and biological forces that attempt to define it. Each embodied self in the book has something important to teach us about living in and with and loving our bodies.

[Ric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unreal. Without a doubt one of the best-curated anthologies of all time. What an incredible collection.