Excisions - Paperback

by Hilary Plum (Author)

Excisions investigates the feeling-- the problem and the syntax-- of being on a threshold. If you don't know what will happen next, you can't yet say what has happened. These poems arise from states of precise unknowing, desperate imagination, inchoate emotion, encounters with mortality and power when they're closing in but haven't caught you yet. What is choice, given the terms of an ill body, survival in a grotesque empire? Tenderly and acutely, these poems examine the life of before and after: when something is excised from you, it was you, and you are what remains.

Author Biography

Hilary Plum (she/her) is the author of five books, most recently Excisions, a volume of poetry, and Hole Studies, an essay collection. Her novel State Champ is forthcoming from Bloomsbury in 2025. With Zach Savich she edits the Open Prose Series at Rescue Press. With Zach Peckham she co-hosts the podcast Index for Continuance. She teaches at Cleveland State and serves as associate director of the CSU Poetry Center. www.hilaryplum.com.