BODIES, by Lisa Righter Sloan

Poetry, chapbook, 28 pages, from Bottlecap Features. BODIES, as the title implies, explores the nature and definition of bodies and the implicit and explicit boundaries the word body places on us. It goes further to examine the nebulous yet clearly defined edges against which we push to re-define ourselves, and examines the ways in which these struggles change and challenge the nature of the “you and I,” subject and object. Finally, it celebrates the deep love for the hidden joys and treasures we uncover as the battle unfolds. In many ways, BODIES can be seen as an Ars Poetica, exploring the ways in which we push against our own bodies of work. It acknowledges the battle we engage in to say something with a new voice, employ a vocabulary that has yet to be heard. Ultimately, it also embraces the strictures we can’t seem to shake, no matter how we employ the beautiful, sometimes astonishing words we have at our disposal. In this regard, the work nods to traditions and forms in poetry. It includes concrete, ekphrastic and language poems and explores form such as the ghazal amidst an array of poems that, nonetheless, give free rein to the sound and swell of meter and rhyme. Lisa Righter Sloan has been loving poetry her whole life and, until recently, didn’t realize that she was one herself. She lives and writes in Charleston, South Carolina.