Sleeping with Demons by Kaecey McCormick

Kaecey McCormick‘s poems explore the shadows of women’s lives with graceful precision. Like the speaker in “I am the River Bark,” she peels away the layers of our shared culture, revealing and then examining the underlying assumptions that drive our notions of gender, violence, illness, and injustice. Each poem in this brave new collection blends memory and imagination in ways that surprise and reward the reader with the kind of truth that can only be achieved through the careful crafting of language.

–David Denny, author of Some Divine Commotion and Fool in the Attic.

Shadows, ‘something both there        and not there’ – an example of Kaecey McCormick‘s brilliant knitting of truth and speculation. How we perceive life (and not life) is based on how we are raised (or not raised). McCormick’s Sleeping with Demons is a collection of poems to give you goosebumps and gasps for breath. Painful in their beauty and musicality, these pieces of art are splinters into a person’s soul. The speakers of these poems have endured a trepidation of life, ultimately surviving to The Now. The bravery and brute strength of the speakers of these poems has defended their souls, the reporting of which makes the reader exhausted, yet smiling. I feel myself “crawl through the black” and “finger the plaid scarf around my neck.” McCormick’s collection is a watercoloring event – sweeps of color on the surface, quietly seeping into the cotton fibers of the canvas, becoming a solid image as the painting takes its time to dry.

–Emily Vieweg, author of but the flames, Finishing Line Press, 2021.