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Becoming Ribbons
This stunning debut poetry collection announces the distinctive voice of an emerging American poet. Amber Adams, a veteran of the Army Reserves who was deployed under Operation Iraqi Freedom, writes of the marks left by war in a new and startling way.
BECOMING RIBBONS presents four acts that weave together themes of love, trauma, loss, and grief. Early poems in the collection reflect on Amber's marriage to Marine Bradley Adams and her own upcoming deployment. In evocative, perceptive poems, Amber describes Bradley's injury in Al-Anbar province. The collection explores the way war and trauma changes Amber and Bradley's relationship, and finally grapples with the end of their marriage, Bradley's death by suicide, and the need to memorialize those who have gone.
Amber Adams traces a remarkable emotional landscape from our contemporary social terrain. As of the publication of this volume, America has been at war for over two decades, in which the personal, inexorable aftermath of war has cracked into the lives of many Americans. Readers will see friends, family, loved ones, and themselves in the challenging lyric moments presented in this collection.
"It's a book of love and loss and survival, full of hard-earned wisdom. With lyric beauty and immense skill, BECOMING RIBBONS explores the interior of a profoundly layered wartime experience."--Brian Turner, author of Here, Bullet
"Adams, in this masterful, beautifully-crafted collection, challenges the facades of safety our institutions represent-- marriage, war, freedom, our temporary bodies."--Jenny Molberg, author of Refusal
"No one in recent memory has written out of the military experience with such nuance, such knowledge, and such tenderness as Amber Adams has in this book." --Bin Ramke, author of Earth on Earth
Poetry.
BECOMING RIBBONS presents four acts that weave together themes of love, trauma, loss, and grief. Early poems in the collection reflect on Amber's marriage to Marine Bradley Adams and her own upcoming deployment. In evocative, perceptive poems, Amber describes Bradley's injury in Al-Anbar province. The collection explores the way war and trauma changes Amber and Bradley's relationship, and finally grapples with the end of their marriage, Bradley's death by suicide, and the need to memorialize those who have gone.
Amber Adams traces a remarkable emotional landscape from our contemporary social terrain. As of the publication of this volume, America has been at war for over two decades, in which the personal, inexorable aftermath of war has cracked into the lives of many Americans. Readers will see friends, family, loved ones, and themselves in the challenging lyric moments presented in this collection.
"It's a book of love and loss and survival, full of hard-earned wisdom. With lyric beauty and immense skill, BECOMING RIBBONS explores the interior of a profoundly layered wartime experience."--Brian Turner, author of Here, Bullet
"Adams, in this masterful, beautifully-crafted collection, challenges the facades of safety our institutions represent-- marriage, war, freedom, our temporary bodies."--Jenny Molberg, author of Refusal
"No one in recent memory has written out of the military experience with such nuance, such knowledge, and such tenderness as Amber Adams has in this book." --Bin Ramke, author of Earth on Earth
Poetry.
77 pages, Paperback
Published August 13, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 29, 2024
"Living / changes the past in unnoticeable ways."
"I, too, / was reckless with thing / I loved."
"Oaths mouthed on the ears / of past lovers aren't written in funeral pamphlets."
"How do moments exist past their making?"
"History is a match of capture / the flag, making prisoners or winners / of those that cross imaginary / lines."
"I want to hold the thick sling of your jaw, / stroke back your golden fur and remind you, / you were never meant to hunt fox."
"What are pearls / but thoughts in the making?"
"She feels like she has become nothing of what she was."
"We can't always / save on another, but we can commit ourselves in the making / of another's presence"
"They all wanted to be so close / to you then. If they actually knew-- / loving you was like the swing / of an axe"
"there is no place like a. church / to begin believing in yourself."
"I, too, / was reckless with thing / I loved."
"Oaths mouthed on the ears / of past lovers aren't written in funeral pamphlets."
"How do moments exist past their making?"
"History is a match of capture / the flag, making prisoners or winners / of those that cross imaginary / lines."
"I want to hold the thick sling of your jaw, / stroke back your golden fur and remind you, / you were never meant to hunt fox."
"What are pearls / but thoughts in the making?"
"She feels like she has become nothing of what she was."
"We can't always / save on another, but we can commit ourselves in the making / of another's presence"
"They all wanted to be so close / to you then. If they actually knew-- / loving you was like the swing / of an axe"
"there is no place like a. church / to begin believing in yourself."
May 31, 2025
A collection of poems about war, love, loss, divorce, grief, suicide, and survival.
from Kleos: "I can no longer trust memory / oxidized by hours. Living / changes the past in unnoticeable ways."
from Army Service Ribbon: "And I learned how to sleep / while pushing my body up from the floor, / learned how to hide my lettered thoughts / under a thin blanket, learned how / to chamber a round and speak a language / made of rifled syllables and camouflaged / aggression."
from Esprit de Corps: "You once said suicide was the fool's way: / a war we all make with our own choices. / How simply we thought then / when terror was outside ourselves."
from Kleos: "I can no longer trust memory / oxidized by hours. Living / changes the past in unnoticeable ways."
from Army Service Ribbon: "And I learned how to sleep / while pushing my body up from the floor, / learned how to hide my lettered thoughts / under a thin blanket, learned how / to chamber a round and speak a language / made of rifled syllables and camouflaged / aggression."
from Esprit de Corps: "You once said suicide was the fool's way: / a war we all make with our own choices. / How simply we thought then / when terror was outside ourselves."
February 25, 2023
An intimate and lyrical collection that is rich in the imagery and pain. The feelings evoked are unique to loss and the lives of select veterans, mixed with hurt nostalgia and sacrifices given and endured.
This work sets on my built in and I think about it often.
This work sets on my built in and I think about it often.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews