"From the pen of one who has known loss, the fearless poems in Dressing the Bear look from many angles at how the 'world. . . takes you hostage.' But this is not a book about grief; it is the act itself. The poet grieving, laments the limits of language even as Leary pushes them. Among the tangles of remembering and enough blame to go around, she invites us to moments of transcendence: her brother 'stretching the ghost of his boyhood into a god, ' 'a holiness at the end of day. . . like waning light looking back at me, ' and 'birds. . . washing their feathers with water from our eyes.' Find in these poems an ache much like the one you harbor, a search for 'afterglow, ' and small promises of new light."
- Kimberly Blaeser, author of Ancient Light, Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2015-16
"There is nothing faint-hearted in Susan L. Leary's, Dressing the Bear, a book-length elegy to her dead brother. These are poems made from grief, from the 'mercy of animation, ' from bones, wings, water, and a 'dress sand-colored with splotches of blue.' Leary writes directly into the pain of her brother's addiction, incarceration, and death. She does not seek ease; she seeks the grief itself and asserts that 'a body is built to be antagonized by God.' Yet, this gorgeous book, that made me weep, teaches that the only way out of pain is through, and Leary moves through: fearlessly, with beauty."
- Jessica Cuello, author of Yours, Creature
"Grief is deeply strange and disorienting and life altering. This collection of poems, dedicated to a lost brother, unfolds the sorrow we are often taught to bottle up. In this impressive book, Leary balances on that wary edge between mourning and imagination, between moving forward and rewinding the past. These elegies absorb and concede the finality of death while miraculously keeping the beloved brother present and pulsing."
- Matt Rasmussen, author of Black Aperture, winner of the Walt Whitman Award/Finalist for the National Book Award
