Poetry. Arden Levine's debut full-length collection, Spoke, follows a woman cycling across the precarious terrain of heredity and legacy against the traffic of early trauma and grief. Part elegy for a parent lost young, part coming-of-age story-in-verse, part Generation X cultural inventory, Levine navigates accidents, sorrow, and urban landscapes with wit, cheek, and an excellent mix-tape.Says Sandra Beasley, "To fathom healing, we must first know the wound. In her moving collection, Arden Levine unpacks the wounds, offering attention that is by equal measures tender and forensic. Spoke creates a taxonomy of grief that is as surprising as it is capacious, locating elegy in handwritten letters, in bicycles, in music, and even in cake. These aren't just poems-they're access points to a complex personal chronicle and, more importantly, they are invitations to dialogue. Spoke offers beautiful revolutions of language and, within each turn, a revelation."Patricia Spears Jones adds, "What do bicycles and parking lots, pies and funeral homes, Joni Mitchell and Dolly Parton all have in common? They are figures in the emotionally powerful poems of Spoke by Arden Levine. This collection whispers, shouts, and sings in sorrow, rage, and tortured memory. Yes, sings: In their terse and truthful way, these poems reveal the living music of father/daughter relationships, guilt, grief, and deep, abiding love. Spoke shifts forms, breaks genres, and quotes pop tunes to tease out, tear up, and temper a woman's emotional journey."
