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Every Form of Ruin
A rebuttal to Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Every Form of Ruin posits the Erinyes’ fury as righteous, understanding Clytemnestra’s rageful response to loss, and refusing Iphigenia’s relegation to a footnoted sacrifice. A fierce and darkly funny examination of anger, these lyrical poems push back against silencing by paying witness to a world where the experiences of women, nonbinary, and femme-identifying people are too often ignored, their responses dismissed as hysterical. These poems are also investigations into the loneliness of mid-life; the search for one’s own self when that self has given its life to service. Every Form of Ruin counters our culture’s erasure of women and resists the categorizations of maiden, mother, crone by blurring those distinctions through the creation of voices that are moved by rage and resistance.
- GenresPoetry
120 pages, Paperback
Published February 14, 2023
24 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 24, 2023
Powerful poetry for such a time as this. Filled with (relatable) righteous indignation and moments of ironic humor shot through with transcendent beauty, Erin Adair-Hodges wields words with the skill of a surgeon and the fire of the forge. Brilliantly feminist, brave, and honest.
And for full disclosure: Erin is my editor at Lake Union. I just told her that working with her is like a lopsided symbiotic relationship in that I draw so much inspiration from her poetry. I am mesmerized by her skill with the written word. Every time I construct a sentence, I’m thinking: will Erin like this? It’s a little like being edited by that brilliant professor in college you’re in awe of and desperately want to impress! She’s a rock star.
Anyway, read Erin’s poetry. You won’t regret it.
And for full disclosure: Erin is my editor at Lake Union. I just told her that working with her is like a lopsided symbiotic relationship in that I draw so much inspiration from her poetry. I am mesmerized by her skill with the written word. Every time I construct a sentence, I’m thinking: will Erin like this? It’s a little like being edited by that brilliant professor in college you’re in awe of and desperately want to impress! She’s a rock star.
Anyway, read Erin’s poetry. You won’t regret it.
August 18, 2023
Erin Adair-Hodges is a fine poem, a master with words and coining her own versions of nouns into verbs. These poems pull the reader in, and the language is treat enough, but her poems are important and speak to the human spirit.
May 31, 2023
Erin Adair-Hodges might be my favorite living poet. So many astonishing moments in this book.
August 23, 2023
Dizzyingly descriptive and unique/biting/piercing. Favorite poems were Haunted and The End of September.
October 8, 2023
I LOVE IT. I HAVE NOTHING SMART TO SAY. CRAFT? TONE? IMAGES? No smart thoughts only love and awe.
November 5, 2025
WOW. This book. wow.
"If you are not laughing, all of the wrong things / have happened to you. Or have not happened / yet."
"You'd better believe that if I hadn't already tied the knot / on these sweatpants I'd be out there in the mad brick city / painting my lips the only red my complexion will allow,"
"I stood / naked as a witch / before the open window, wanting / on a Wednesday / to be just a little bit / destroyed."
"When I say / Jesus was my boyfriend what I mean / was that he told me he loved me / even though I didn't deserve it, / that it was a gift I had to repay / with my one stupid life / and that I should wait for him."
"We can't love / what we love into loving / us."
"It is possible / that it is not wanting which is wrong / but rather wanting what is wrong that all songs / are about."
"I went to sleep a thunderstorm only to wake up a wife."
"Mostly now I see how want playacts as / need, how desire zombies,"
"Men have trouble guessing my age / which makes it hard for them to know / in which way to dismiss me."
"He wants her to stop writing about the things he did, / different than wanting to have not done them at all."
"The man at the center of me is grieved, almost / deserving of pity, but he regrets the consequence / and not the crime. I could forgive but am not that kind / of god."
"I longed for the discipline / to disorder my eating, to let my future form / fill my body's needs, stripping the house to studs."
"See, I know now the wreckage / all this wanting has made."
"I don't want my youth back / but I wouldn't mind someone else's."
Update 2025: I'm teaching this book, and it continues to stun and blossom.
"If you are not laughing, all of the wrong things / have happened to you. Or have not happened / yet."
"You'd better believe that if I hadn't already tied the knot / on these sweatpants I'd be out there in the mad brick city / painting my lips the only red my complexion will allow,"
"I stood / naked as a witch / before the open window, wanting / on a Wednesday / to be just a little bit / destroyed."
"When I say / Jesus was my boyfriend what I mean / was that he told me he loved me / even though I didn't deserve it, / that it was a gift I had to repay / with my one stupid life / and that I should wait for him."
"We can't love / what we love into loving / us."
"It is possible / that it is not wanting which is wrong / but rather wanting what is wrong that all songs / are about."
"I went to sleep a thunderstorm only to wake up a wife."
"Mostly now I see how want playacts as / need, how desire zombies,"
"Men have trouble guessing my age / which makes it hard for them to know / in which way to dismiss me."
"He wants her to stop writing about the things he did, / different than wanting to have not done them at all."
"The man at the center of me is grieved, almost / deserving of pity, but he regrets the consequence / and not the crime. I could forgive but am not that kind / of god."
"I longed for the discipline / to disorder my eating, to let my future form / fill my body's needs, stripping the house to studs."
"See, I know now the wreckage / all this wanting has made."
"I don't want my youth back / but I wouldn't mind someone else's."
Update 2025: I'm teaching this book, and it continues to stun and blossom.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews