Overview

In poetry and short prose, Fugitive but Gorgeous maps haunted landscapes where American southern and Appalachian cultures both constrain and inspire. Its title takes inspiration from the properties of natural or organic dyes, such as those rendered by plants or berries--vivid in color but ""fugitive,"" prone to fade over time. Female personae are often themselves fugitive, seeking outlets from confining relationships, prescribed roles, and gendered legacies as they redefine their desires. Via art, music, flora, and fauna, surreal portals may open between memory and sorrow, childhood and midlife, presence and absence. Alluding to the author's grief over losing her father as an only child 13 years ago, and her mother in 2024 to cancer, the collection petitions nature and narrative for solace.

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9781962405621

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Reviews

When Elinor Ann Walker writes, ""Nothing beckons like the liminal,"" she deftly articulates what makes Fugitive but Gorgeous so compelling. These are poems of the blurry in-between: sandhill cranes passing through clouds and nighttime darkness not yet dark enough for sleep and a painting of a girl who might be releasing a balloon or might have lost it to the wind. With elegant language and close attention, Walker examines spaces of unanswerability-asking the questions anyway and inviting us to do the same. --Abbie Kiefer, author of Certain Shelter This book transmutes some of life's darkness through a quantum flute of Elinor Ann Walker's own invention. Fugitive but Gorgeous speaks to the ephemeral in a voice both lyrical and lush. Fugitive communions exist in ""Bodies of Water"" as summer lovers meet for their final intimate encounter. Tumors steal the author's mother away as hellebores droop and dry like miniature ghost portraits. Art and music offer their own staggered intervals, creating backdrops of color, sound (and silences) through which we experience these beautifully rendered passages that speak to all who have lived, loved, and grieved. --Koss, author of Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect

Author Information

Elinor Ann Walker's poems have been featured on Verse Daily, in several anthologies, and appear or are forthcoming in AGNI, American Poetry Journal, Bayou Magazine, Bear Review, Nimrod International Journal, Plant-Human Quarterly, Plume, Poet Lore, Quarterly West, The Southern Review, Terrain, and elsewhere. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, lives in the Appalachian foothills, and is on the poetry staff at River Heron Review. Winner of the 2024 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions First Chap Prize, Fugitive but Gorgeous is her first book. Give Sorrow (Whittle Micro-Press) is forthcoming. Find her online: https: //elinorannwalker.com.

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