Lambflesh

by Caroline Shea

Caroline Shea’s Lambflesh crackles with stark and magic-stung survival songs, asks ‘what bloom or blight / will make a home in me,’ asks what balm or gauze or “scavenged relics” for trauma, for generational ailments, for pain and its haunted memory seeping through the blood. These poems are dark and potent and myth-heavy; they unbandage the stigma from mental health issues and sing “as refusal of erasure.” Jenn Givhan, ,i>Girl with Death Mask and Rosa’s Einstein “Unstitch me and wear me as a pelt, a blood-and-guts ball gown,” writes the speaker of Caroline Shea’s Lambflesh, an invitation charged with ruthless longing, mixing violence and horror with the intoxicating language of desire. The body depicted in these poems is “always / a negotiation,” at once a stranger “Zoo of lung and stubborn tissue” and a dear familiar friend “Oh, you old girl / you unthanked junk.” The speaker meditates on these twin feelings of belonging and estrangement—"when you see the creature / wearing your old skin // you will know her”—and marvels at the newness of this body in recovery “What is it—to look / in the mirror, turning and turning and think, finally, / I could live here, yes—I live here.” The collection’s rich tonal complexity and gorgeous attention to language contribute to its extraordinary rendering of self-discovery. Emily Skaja, Brute I I am drawn to poems that break me into a tenderness I’d never known. Caroline Shea’s Lambflesh does it over and over. Here is a new voice, verdant with longing, humming “the lovely machinery” of her body, “bending towards light.” Major Jackson, Roll Deep and The Absurd Poems

Genres: Poetry

59 pages, Paperback

Published December 10, 2019

About the author

Caroline Shea is the author of the chapbook Lambflesh (Kelsay Books, 2019). She works as a freelance editor and is an assistant poetry editor at Washington Square Review. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Crab Fat Magazine, The Pinch, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among other publications. She recently received The Pinch Literary Award and was a finalist for the Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize. She's currently an MFA candidate in poetry at NYU.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite, revelatory, revealing and celebratory. This collection is filled with evocative poems that transport you to moments of reflection, of joy, love and loss. I have read many of the poems multiple times and have found something new each time. This is a wonderful first entry to the canon of american poets. You will enjoy each and every one of these poems and should expect to linger over those that connect you to your own memories and experiences. Loved it.

[Kori · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I would like it more if I fully understood it. Just getting into poetry so was a bit confused.

[Bay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike any poetry I’ve ever read. Ever line, every verse, nothing but raw experience filled with contagious insight. After every page it felt as though I needed a break to fully process what I had read. Rereading almost each piece multiple times to grasp its significance. The verses are profound and eliciting, feeding into the book’s anatomical theme. Gore filled and telling of the unvarnished human experience in all its glory. So few words, yet so content filled. I was so disheartened to see this is Shea’s only published work. This artist could change poetry as I, and many others, know it.