Book of Gods & Grudges

by Jessica L. Walsh

Jessica Walsh's Book of Gods and Grudges tells a tale of generational trauma and transcendence. She declares early on that "My first kin were killers," people for whom "burnout was a luxury" they could not afford. Her speaker struggles through illness and sobriety and grappling with God as a problem she tries to solve as she finds her own calling. The poems are unflinchingly honest and impeccably crafted. They show us what it means to stay "flagrantly alive."

-Grace Bauer, author of Unholy Heart: New and Selected Poems

Genres: Poetry

81 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 2022

About the author

Jessica L. Walsh is a poet and professor at Harper College in suburban Chicago, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She is the author of two chapbooks, Knocked Around and The Division of Standards. Her work has appeared in Crab Creek Review, Midwestern Gothic, Ninth Letter, and more. How to Break My Neck is her first full-length collection.

Reviews

[James O'Brien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some books of poems weird the language, turning the words we know into unfamiliar landscapes. T.S. Eliot knew this. So did Elizabeth Bishop.

Some books of poems reveal the poet and harness the words we know into their specific landscape(s). Jessica L. Walsh knows this. 'Book of Gods & Grudges' holds lines and whole poems that feel like something you weren't supposed to know, a swelling rush of revealed details, a cry for compassion; you wonder after reading some of these whether you've just been a party to a kind of betrayal.

Her lines are confident, the enjambment is only ever generous, and these salt-swept post-winter blues are haunted by — and in love with — all the days that slipped through, back when being dangerous was the meaning of life itself, later replaced by days of morning mirrors and the face that has taken over the one we used to know.

[Sophia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contains some really beautiful notes on grief and motherhood

[Shilo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This feels like it was written for me (even tho obvi it wasn't). I loved it so much. Using a bunch of these poems in my Anger and Addiction (lovingly called Revenge & Cigarettes) section in Intro to Poetry.

[Vee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book after her poem When My Daughter Says I Was Never Punk circulated on social media last summer. That poem is still my favourite and there are many other gems in here as well.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

CONTAMINATED

Earth's slightly non-spherical
its poles a little akimbo

On its surface once in Illinois
I held a woman's hand

while she cried about her man
her job her ungrateful kid

When she said she hoped for Trump
because everything would get better

I did not withdraw my hand
or demur even a little

All I could do was hold her hand
and I would hold it again

If I lose you here I lose you
like I lost a friend at Walmart

just by walking in the door
Lost another for skipping organics

If I lose you now I lose you
like I lost a poet over another poet

because one had done a bad deed
and the other swore sides

like I lost my neighbor
when I did not get a shelter dog

Stand far away
From a distance the Earth is perfect (13-14)


ALL THE SMALL FESTIVALS

In those years of light worry
even our music did little
besides giving us reason
to lie together in the sun
on blankets anchored by books
as we planned futures of poor joy.

When worldly stories broke through
they came ribboned with hope.
Nothing loomed.

We were content, I am saying,
with lovely abstractions.

A time happened and then,
one day, it ended.
The mystery is why.

Not every age is an apocalypse,
I promise. This one will end,
though the mystery is when. (51)

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about family, trauma, survival, and identity.

from Trespasses: "I am loyal with anger. For love / I hate who my people hate. / My family's roots? Right there."

from No Trees for Shade: "How hard she worked to believe herself / when we all knew our blood ran bitter. / Even when our people set out to make peace / they came home carrying heads."

from Liquefaction: "Today I learn my marrow's aged out, / the registry letter grateful / that I made myself available / in my vital time. // I tuck the letter in my purse / where I touch it often, / this permission slip / to save no one."

[Chami Rassekh · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I can barely remember having time to mock love or Elvis or Heaven. We are here and gone. I love you and I do it tender. I sing no other songs.”

“ I was born on a low road. Nothing is beneath me, I’m afraid. I go down forever.”

[Letitia Trent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vivid and beautiful

[April Peveteaux · Rating 5 out of 5]

So damn good