Doe

by Aimée Baker

Winner of the 2018 Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize

Doe began as author Aimée Baker's attempt to understand and process the news coverage of a single unidentified woman whose body was thrown from a car leaving Phoenix, Arizona. It soon grew into a seven-year-long project with the goal to document, mourn, and witness the stories of missing and unidentified women in the United States.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published April 23, 2018

Reviews

[Jan Stinchcomb · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems, centering on the disappearance of women and girls, are beautiful and devastating. Baker has given a voice to missing women in cases dating back as far as 1910. Her imagery focusing on the body is particularly evocative and heart wrenching. DOE should be read and taught everywhere.

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Based only on the topic, one might expect these poems to read as chilling, maudlin, or shocking; instead Doe humanizes its subjects and creates quiet meditations on danger, death, and dying.

Some of my favorite moments;

The human eye can recover
from injury
in days.

If something frightening happens today,
it means the earth moves in circles.

Give to her
words that feel like a knife in her mouth,
a tongue that can set those night hemlocks on fire.

We are grace, because memory
is a parachute that falls
quickly until it lights
with a flamed match.

[Aude Odeh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a unique take on giving a voice to the voiceless.