The Bindery is so excited to host the launch party for Melissa Stein's second book of poems! Don't miss it, friends! This is not going to be your usual book party…
Take a stroll through Terrible blooms, a meander of sense and surprise. Sweeten the dark. Contradict yourself. Unbind a memory. Eat a poem. Illuminate a scar . . . Plus great company, decadent treats, and darn good liquor.
Doors open at 7:00, including the bar! This is far more than just a reading -- please arrive as early as you possibly can to give yourself time for the full experience.
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In this lush, disturbing second collection from Melissa Stein, exquisite images are salvaged from harm and survival. Set against the natural world’s violence—both ordinary and sublime—pain shines jewel-like out of these poems, illuminating what lovers and families conceal. Stein uses her gifts for persona and lyric richness to build worlds that are vivid, intricate, tough, sexy, and raw: “over and over // life slapping you in the face / till you’re newly burnished / flat-out gasping and awake.” Breathless with risk and redemption, Terrible Blooms shows how loss claims us and what we reclaim.
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“Ms. Stein reminds us that there is no honey—rough, or otherwise—without the sting.” —The New York Times
Quarry
As you slept
I was thinking about the quarry,
about light going deeper
into earth, into rock, the hurt
of light hitting layers
that should be hidden,
that should be buried,
and how when it rained
for a long time that absence filled
with suffering, and we swam.
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Melissa Stein is the author of the poetry collections Terrible blooms (Copper Canyon Press) and Rough Honey, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize, selected by Mark Doty. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, The American Poetry Review, Best New Poets, Harvard Review, New England Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. She is a freelance editor in San Francisco.
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Please note: this event will be at The Bindery, 1727 Haight. RSVP appreciated but not required.
This is an all ages event. The bar opens at 7, event begins at 7:30pm.
If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of one of Melissa's books, order below and put your request in the comments field.
