Left-Handed Like a Lightning Whelk by Susan Niz

Susan Niz’s book Left-Handed Like a Lightning Whelk is a magnetic field, charged and floating through a mysterious world of mothers, daughters, fields, birds, and stitches holding wounds to the surface of this world, giving borders and bindings to memory. The elements – the wind, sky, smoke, lightning, glass, fire, iron, feathers, and other shivering bounties – animate the night in which we may all be “Dreaming of endings / Of what will take me / Or you from me.” Here we have a book of poems humming with the dual forces of safety and hunger that animate all existence. These poems see through our human skin and ask us, though I am “Sliding a coat over pajamas / Pulling the door shut with a quiet click / Am I the wolf?”

–Sun Yung Shin, Minnesota Book Award winner, author of Unbearable Splendor and Rough, and Savage

In Left-Handed Like a Lightning Whelk, Susan Niz observes that “proximity to demons is a strategy.” She knows we don’t have much choice. Closeness to darkness and danger is inevitable in a world torn open, especially for mothers acclimating to the role, shepherding children through new horrors, acquiring skills as they go along. Niz’s observations are specific and sharp. With careful language, she examines a time of wilderness and wonder. Recognizing that “a scar is better than a wound,” and knowing some mending will be necessary, Niz takes up the needle and thread, suggests this work is unfamiliar to her, then pierces the skin, begins her skillful repairs.

–Michael Kleber-Diggs, Poet Laureate of Anoka County Libraries, Minnesota