The Geography of Kitchens by Amy Haddad

Amy Haddad is an exciting voice in contemporary poetry.  In a literary landscape preoccupied with formal innovation and artistic novelty, Haddad reminds us that poets are—first and foremost—storytellers.  Her enviable command of narrative will render you suddenly and startlingly aware of the transformational work that only the most skillful poetry can do.

–Kristina Marie Darling, Editor-in-Chief, Tupelo Press & Tupelo Quarterly

When I read poems as clear and moving as Amy Haddad’s, I’m refreshed by the very reminder of why we turn to them in serious times:  for wonder, commemoration, connection, and solace.  Within the frame of gardens, houses, and families, we find the specific widening beyond its humble singularity and time stretching beyond the space in which we experience it.  Thus, every period in which we find ourselves is a serious time, every scene a serious place. The poems are thus a kind of centrifuge whose value is to exalt the craft that brings personal history to life, swaying to the music of moving language.

–David Rigsbee