Humanly

by Stevie Edwards

"Stevie Edwards’s Humanly bravely and vulnerably confronts the complexities of living with mental illness in a voice that is equally feral and crafted. Through a gorgeous and gorge-filled landscape, these poems struggle with dislocation, past sexual trauma, grief, the chronic looming of psychiatric wards, and a constant attempt to redirect patterns of suicidal ideation."

Advance Praise for Humanly:

“In Humanly, Stevie Edwards wakes us into our own bodies with her fierce honesty:The first time I tried to slip my outsides/I failed. This is a courageous book of startling images and original voice that surges beyond the difficult questions: If I string the night between two fence posts, /one side heaven and one side hell… Or: I was/watching myself in the hotel mirror to make sure/my body was still happening… Edwards blows the doors off the outer body, delivering us to the beating heart and the inner doors of human mercy. Humanly burns need and desire into the sound of survival: a prayer/in praise of the groaning in the backroom:/Let each body be loved until its end.”
—Jan Beatty

"With an unpredictability that alternately jolts and mesmerizes, Stevie Edwards has crafted an intricate exploration of life as we'd rather not know it. There is much in these stanzas to jolt and unsettle--stark crafting and a relentless respect for the possibilities of word create a tension only felt in the presence of revelation."
—Patricia Smith

"If I had never before heard anyone say 'Art Saves Lives,' I swear on the bullseye of my own wrist, I would have run through the streets screaming it the moment I finished this book. I want everyone who has never believed in the possibility of being given back Time, to read these poems. Not a moment of grief denied, and still, each turn of the page, a vaulted ceiling in my heavy heart. What a generous and intensely vulnerable offering to our survival this book is.
—Andrea Gibson

Genres: Poetry

148 pages, Paperback

First published March 17, 2015

About the author

Dr. Stevie Edwards is an Assistant Professor at Clemson University and Poetry Editor of The South Carolina Review. Stevie’s poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. They are the author of Quiet Armor (Northwestern University Press, 2023), Sadness Workshop (Button Poetry, 2018), Humanly (Small Doggies Press, 2015), and Good Grief (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012). They hold a PhD from the University of North Texas and an MFA from Cornell University. Originally a Michigander, they now live in South Carolina with their spouse and a small herd of rescue pitbulls.

Reviews

[Alicia Hoffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stevie Edwards makes magic. Out of trauma and grief and loneliness, she somehow stitches beauty into language which becomes its own redemption. There are so many lines I could quote but I won't. Read it. You won't be disappointed. In fact, you may wake up to the small wonders that make pain savory, that make living a boon.