Blood Lyrics: Poems

By: Katie Ford

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Synopsis: "Katie Ford's is a finely-wrought lyrical beauty, a poetry of detail and care, but she has set it within an epic arc." —PoetryI lie still, play dead, am delivered decree:our daughter weighs seven hundred dimes,paperclips, teaspoons of sugar,this child of gramsfor which the good nurselaid out her studiesas a coin purseinto which our tiny wealth clinked,our daughter spilling almostto the floor.—from "Of a Child Early Born"In Katie Ford's third collection, she sets her music into lyrics wrung from the world's dangers. Blood Lyrics is a mother's song, one seared with the knowledge that her country wages long, aching wars in which not all lives are equal. There is beauty imparted, too, but it arrives at a cost: "Don't say it's the beautiful / I praise," Ford writes. "I praise the human, / gutted and rising."