Running Aground by Elizabeth Joy Levinson

“The beautiful poems in Elizabeth Joy Levinson’s Running Aground do not blink. They swim open eyed into the land of hard, sand-scrubbed love and loneliness and pain. And they speak for us girls so rarely seen in poems, difficult, poor, wild sea girls. These are poems of strong images and haunting lines, truth poems, father poems, ocean poems. It is a collection I will read and re-read again and again.”

–Leigh Camacho Rourks, author of Moon Trees and Other Orphans

“Elizbeth Joy Levinson’s Running Aground navigates us through ports of poverty, sea creatures, Florida & the dangers of opening one’s mouth & speaking (or not). Thankfully, Levinson does speak out in these poems full of deft lyricism, pacing & powerful metaphors. She guides us through moments of peril like a jellyfish coming too close & the heartache in seeing a father run aground. These poems fuse images & language of land & sea, of ships & cars packed w/suitcases, of mermaids & girls reaching out w/fingers “trying/ to hold everything/ at once.” With Levinson as our captain, the poems in Running Aground will steadily sail on & steer our way through troubled waters & time.”

–Jacob Saenz, author of Throwing the Crown, winner of the 2018 APR/Honickman First Book Prize.