My Heart But Not My Heart

Poetry. "In these hybrid utterances by Stephanie Cawley we are in the world of neither/nor, both/and, but not simply in terms of the way the work seeks to speak. The speaker herself balances on the tightrope between living and dying, between staring out the window and wildness. What language can speak the dead father, these poems ardently ask, What language can speak the psyche's collapse into itself? When I read MY HEART BUT NOT MY HEART, which has the musical quality of river, it's impossible for me not to also feel, oxymoronically, a burning under that river. This is what I always mean when I ask, What is compelling the poem to speak? It is as if there is no containing this work, for Cawley, no not attempting it. This is the only kind of contemporary literature I'm interested in reading."--Dawn Lundy Martin