The Quick

by Jessica Traynor

Echoes and hauntings, visions and visitations, glimpses of other worlds in the margins of this … the second collection of poems by Jessica Traynor begins with a brush with death and goes on to explore a startling variety of connections with life and the matter of living. Throughout, from the loss of loved ones to the arrival of a firstborn “no bigger / than a loaf of bread”, the poems stay faithful to a busy cast of characters which includes strangers encountered on a moonlit quay, the infamous propagandist Lord Haw-Haw, and the restless spirits of recent family, national and international history.

Genres: Poetry

74 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2018

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked many of these poems. I felt as though the link that bound them was always just a step ahead of me, like I was chasing whatever thing brought all these moments together, but that may have been because of how I spread out the reading.

[Anna Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Halfway across the Hogarth Road
the life flew out of me,

pitched itself into the dusk.
What grip did I loosen to let it go?

What shape was out there speaking for me,
picking up my stitches, finding my lost loves,

lying down soft beside them in the dark?
Watching it go was a gift

sudden as rain on a sweltering night
and when it came back - cool wanderer

pressing through my skin -
I knew I had been lessened,

that I was somehow more alone
than when I had been divisible.”

- The Life

“…all symmetry lost in chaos,
but beautiful, still,
in the way of imperfect things.”

- from VI. A Proposed Housing Algorithm

“…We feel sorry for Adam.
But everyone laughs, because difference
lives under your bed

and grabs your ankles;
laughter can scare it away.”

- from Using My Tongue