Battledore by L.J. Sysko, NWVS #131

A metaphorical cave explorer and deep sea diver, Sysko writes radiant poems that crackle with new energy and fresh implications.  In lines that are visceral, cerebral, and ambitious, Battledore charts experiences, including the volcanic eruptions of birth and motherhood, that crack open lives.

–Lee Upton, author of Bottle the Bottles the Bottle the Bottles and The Tao of Humiliation

With ferocity and keen attention, L. J. Sysko bears witness to losses hidden in the everyday. These consequential poems move with knife-like precision to slice through the complacencies of the domestic, from motherhood to our cruelties to animals Sysko is unflinching and unsentimental. The moving and devastating poem, “Spider Goat” is a tour-de-force, a stunning poem that brings together all the threads of this fine book, in which the culture itself and its prescriptions for happiness and progress are a kind of violation.

–Anne Marie Macari, author of Red Deer (Persea, 2015)

In Battledore, L.J. Sysko digs in, dismantling motherhood and marriage with the quick thrusts of an oyster knife, eager to see whatever’s inside. Fearless, investigative, sometimes wickedly honest, these poems startle with keen, exacting language and a searing, incontrovertible intelligence.

–Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife and Circling the Sun