"Erin Carlyle's Magnolia Canopy Otherworld is a book of precise, gemlike images, where beneath the duende-soaked landscape of rivers, rabbits, trailers, and woodlots, the evidence of patriarchal damage lurks like an undertow. As an act of resistance, Carlyle sets before us the world we have been taught to ignore and says look: the roadkill, the small child wandering alone, the desolation of addiction, the woman-as-object. Wherever the poet casts her eye, the ghosts of violence, family, adolescence, and loss materialize and their visitations are traced with an urgent lyricism that is both gritty and graceful. Open these pages and watch as Erin Carlyle calls forward the drowned girls in their matching white dresses. Be ready for her to interrupt your life with poem after stunning poem in this haunting and arresting debut."

 

-F. Daniel Rzicznek, author of Settlers