Grip: Poems

Winner of the Gival Press Poetry Award ?'Some of us live at a slant',? the poet Yvette Neisser Moreno writes in Grip and then proceeds to show us how, in language soothing and startling, both. The poems are 'a slow plea/for the beating of human hearts,' whether among the conflicts and struggles of the Middle East or within a single family or a single one of us wrestling with her grief. These are poems of great humanity. Read them for their crystalline truths and for the joy they find in our difficult hearts."--Sarah Browning, director of Split This Rock and author of Whiskey in the Garden of Eden "From the horrors of the Holocaust to the grace of plié, from the pyramids of Egypt to her father?s passing, Yvette Neisser Moreno?s noble voice in Grip explores the 'arc out of thinking' between a dawn that 'trembles with faint prayers' and death like a 'fluidity of grain.' Neisser Moreno?s yearning for comprehension and her pristine sensitivity 'grip' the reader from the start. In her delicate poems she reminds us that strength rises from understanding and that poetry, at its core, is always a way to 'untwist language from dreams.' Enter the 'stillness before snow,' the compelling landscape of this extraordinary collection."--Clifford Bernier, judge and author of The Silent Art "Yvette Neisser Moreno?s poems shimmer in that mysterious space between rib and spine, body and sky, farewell and departure. This is where she seeks equilibrium. She brings the same discipline and elegance to her poems as she does to dance and calligraphy."--Barbara Goldberg ?With quiet precision and evocative narratives that take us from lovely Hussein smoking a sheesha after losing his sight to an inner landscape of the Great Pyramid and a passage into eternity with its endless, circling shades of deeper blue, Yvette Neisser Moreno takes us on a journey where the senses are the compass for being present in the world. This fine first book of poems takes us along the uncharted spaces between the body and the experience of the world, calling us into its winding, into the warmth and joy of its eloquent movements. The poet draws us up close and releases us into our own bodies, our own mindful breath.?--Naomi Ayala