Variation on Testimony

by Lisa Hiton

"As soon as we witness the women standing—grieving—on the bridge in Lisa Hiton’s arresting chapbook Variation on Testimony, we know the women exist in peril: it is here on the bridge, suffering from the aftermath of an assault, 'where I become violent,' Hiton tells us, 'when I could have been lovely.' Variation renders both the actors and recipients of violence in all sizes, from the “helicopters grinding their teeth” after the mass attacks in Boston and Sandy Hook to the singular “hollow, spongy”
sound a man’s arm makes as it smashes a woman’s shoulder in Chicago—and in her deft modulation, Hiton refuses us any easy break from her work bearing witness. She conjures a world that holds queer women in its beautiful particularity while simultaneously facing unceasing cruelty: 'I want to make a mythology out of the image
in the window,' Hiton writes, 'you picking tomatoes. / It always rains on the lover before she dies.' These incisive, imagistic poems bring the violence that some might only ever see as shadow forever into the light. We need them more than ever."

- Rachel Mennies, author of ​The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards

"Clear-eyed, Lisa Hiton's poems of witness are sobering and fiercely necessary. They explore the violence--internalized and externalized, social and political--queer women endure and survive. These poems think through lyric, the lushness of an inner life never extricated from our contemporary moment. Still there is room for lusciousness here. Like Golden Age Dutch paintings, Hiton has an eye for light and food and love. I'm thankful for these unflinching poems."

- Derrick Austin, author of Trouble the Water

"Confident and vivid, Variation on Testimony swings effortlessly between the abstract and the deeply personal. Every image seems newly constructed even when it's referencing the oldest tropes." ​

​- Stephanie Pushaw, from the judge's citation

"Throughout the collection, Hiton strikes an impressive balance between tenderness and threat, between the fragmented image and fully realized scene, between what is said and what is palpably unsaid."

- Caylin Capra-Thomas, from the judge's citation

Genres: Poetry

First published February 9, 2017

About the author

Lisa Hiton's debut book of poems, Afterfeast, was selected by Mary Jo Bang to win the Dorset Prize at Tupelo Press. She holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from Boston University and an M.Ed. in Arts in Education from Harvard University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Kenyon Review, NPR, The Adroit Journal, New South​, Linebreak, The Paris-American, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and LAMBDA Literary among others. She is the Founder and Producer of Queer Poem-a-Day at the Deerfield Public Library.

Reviews

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5-4