Totem Beasts

"The visible carries/the invisible on its back in the Blake-ian dreamscapes of Laurette Folk's Totem Beasts. Her anxious musings, tiny buds of hope, and wending narratives-of paternal specters, IVF turmoil, and undomesticated femininity-tear through this notable debut collection." Jennifer Jean, The Fool "In Totem Beasts, Folks places the reader in the bed, womb, at the family dining table stained with olive oil, in the waters off Gloucester. And we are left breathless, speechless with this fine poet's fearless language that tackles fertility, family, death, religion, love, and God. Folk takes us through a portal, illumed where loss is palpable, just barely hidden, always shifting its shape: sometimes a father, or the ancestors, or perhaps, the unborn. These are dream-like, sensual poems spoken by a woman still dripping fresh with longing and need. Laurette Folk's poems demand that we listen to her new language/we must now learn to speak." Jennifer Martelli, The Uncanny Valley "In this extraordinary collection, Laurette Folk weaves mythical and tangible elements in poems that bless the magnificence of science, faith, history and the natural world. These are poems of great attention and possibility, pulling what is six decibels below our audible range into the light. And once the unseen has risen, she skillfully unwraps it in a context that is grounded in our shared human experiences of loss, death, conception and love. In doing so, with masterful arrangement, she offers more than symbols-she invites the reader to join her in its creation. As she writes in "My Grandfather, the Christ," you took the word in my hand/multiplied it one hundred fold/and filled the room with a new language/we must now learn to speak. In speaking, Folk shows us how much we are tethered to our beliefs and ghosts, but also illumined and boundless. Megan Merchant, Gravel Ghosts