ADVANCE PRAISE FOR FLORENCE

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"Erasure is the rhythm of Bess Cooley’s beautiful, eerie, haunting debut collection. Erasure of a beloved grandfather lost to the whiteout of Alzheimer’s. Erasure of the poet’s childhood, where that grandfather taught her the stars, planets, and constellations, which now he cannot name. Possible erasure of the poet’s own brain by a growth that proves benign and is called an arachnoid, or 'spider,' cyst. How terribly fitting then, that the formal principle underlying this book is that Cooley performs rigorous erasures on many of her poems to discover a hidden lyric clarity. Through erasures, through the spider poet’s nonlinear loopings of word webs, Cooley rebuilds her vanishing world, which is also our world, which she reclaims as a shining Crystal Palace, edifice of fragile glass we see through to behold who and what we were, are, and will become."

Donald Platt, author of Swansdown and Tender Voyeur

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"This meditative, sharp collection offers what we seek from elegy: not just tribute to what has been lost, but an entry into the question of what can—against all odds—be kept. The book offers no easy shortcuts, but shows one way to balance carefully across the still water of loss."

Rosalie Moffett, National Poetry Series Prize-winning

author of Nervous Sytem

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"The lost, those beloved and otherwise, live in this book-what to do with human ashes past and future; a grandfather playing the grandfather in Heidi as he climbs the mountain of childhood’s basement stairs; how a life ends when someone else’s does. “Show me the bright planets,” this poet nevertheless insists, time-traveling back fearless, full of calm urgency. These poems haunt even themselves. Concerning an IV drip, courtesy of generous strangers: “How long before my blood’s mine again?” Bess Cooley asks. And the world multiplies and deepens."

Marianne Boruch, author of Bestiary Dark