"Leona Sevick's The Bamboo Wife is a mesmerizing poetry collection that takes readers on a poignant journey through the intricacies of identity, culture, memory, and love. The title evokes the strange and silent presence of a 'bamboo wife.' This artifact serves as a metaphor for the complexities and nuances of human relationships, and the enduring impact of the past on the present. In a book that 'slices my heart at unexpected times, ' The Bamboo Wife is a compelling and emotionally resonant work."
- January Gill O'Neil, author of Glitter Road
"I was so taken with Leona Sevick's The Bamboo Wife that I read it twice the day I received it, which has only happened to me a few times before. The speaker's unrestrained frankness about the complexities of motherhood and womanhood, self-reliance and self-destruction, and identity, lineage, and tradition remind me of Edna Pontellier's maw-opening observations of her interior landscape in Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Sevick's speaker at one point asks the question, 'When do I stop holding / everything I love / like it's broken?' And in another poem, the speaker, defiant and empowered, declares, 'You'd say I can't be / someone else's medicine. // Watch me.' These two emotionally charged and seemingly conflicted critiques of the manner in which one can love and care for others are at the crux of this collection. The Bamboo Wife at its core is a collection about love, love in all of its bewilderingly tender and heartbreaking ruminations."
- Adam Vines, author of Lures and Editor of Birmingham Poetry Review
"Whether it's her brother's scarred, burned hand or her father guarding the hospital room of George Wallace or her Korean heritage, Leona Sevick is haunted by the past. Her poems are intimate, steely in their fierce gaze at the contradictions of this world and herself; and yet she somehow manages to give the people in her poems a depth that makes them unforgettable and very human. The reader trusts this poet's voice, her balanced vision, her willingness to allow for mystery and the untoward. A powerful book."
- David Mura, author of The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself
