"These poets grapple with self-image and self-doubt as they lay bare their identities. Their poems capture the struggle between what we are told and what we believe about ourselves, what is imagined and what is real. They are alive with memory and anger and hope. I dare you to read these powerful poems and not feel the feelings of your own childhood pain
or teen angst once again. But it will also remind you that you are not alone and that you have the power to mend yourself-and hopefully, as Jenn Givhan concludes, 'You would see who you are / & marvel.'"
-Sylvia Vardell, author of the ALA bestseller Poetry Aloud Here and co-editor of The Poetry Friday Anthology
and Poetry Friday Power Book series
"I SING: THE BODY is a miracle of diverse voices speaking truth and life into the too often unheard songs of the body and heart."
-Chris Baron, author of All of Me, a middle grade novel-in-verse about body image, and professor of English at San Diego City College
There is no one body. There is no one poem. In I Sing-My Body, the many bodies resonate in the many poems. Like our bodies when we arrive in them, these poems are all "Beautiful beams from the inside out." Sometimes we may not be ready to see the light; sometimes the lights sees us, all of us. I say stand up as you read this book, move your body as the poems move through you. You will never end up in the same place. You will only be beginning.
-Crag Hill's next book, co-edited with Todd Fuller, is Level Land: Poems For and About I35 (forthcoming from Lamar University Press)
