Overview

Though Constance E. Boyle, Brooke Granville, Petra Perkins and Gail Waldstein have different faces, personalities, and life experiences, they all share qualities implied by the name, ""Eve,"" a word with roots in ""life"" and ""breath."" They have worked together as poets for many years, each distilling her own life experiences and helping the others to hone poems which pay tribute to resilience, love, survival and spirit in a world where abuse, betrayal, death and grief are also deeply rooted. Constance E. Boyle is a lifelong creative writer with an MFA from Goddard. She spent most of her career working at Denver Health as a physician assistant in pediatric and adolescent medicine. Along the way, she facilitated an improv theater for youth and published prize-winning poetry. Her seventeen poems in The Faces of Eve recreate the terrifying experience of a child whose abuser approaches (""attic""), the wry self-assertion of a woman who rejects sexism (""dance 101""). Her Eve accepts her own bipolar disorder (""I'll tell you bipolar""); she dances, kayaks, grieves the death of her mother, watches in bemused delight as her children grow (""mom, you'll love this""). Brooke Granville's path begins with family tangles. Adopted as an infant by a couple who afterwards divorced, she was ""part of three families ... before [she] was five."" After her own early divorce, she spent her career in real estate. She began writing poetry largely as a way of engaging with specific traumas: spousal abuse, divorce and its after-effects. But her Eve's scope is broad; her twenty-two poems come from decades full of challenges, sometimes met with hesitation, often with success, always with memorable images. Granville writes with clear love about her children, with hope about her second marriage, with unforgettable understatement about her son's suicide (""my son's chair"" and ""the oh of suicide""), and with gentle spirit about eventually finding her birth mother and a newly extended family. Petra Perkins, with degrees in Computer Engineering, Aerospace Management, and Creative Writing, is probably the most widely published in this talented foursome, with poems, stories, and essays in The Huffington Post, The Colorado Independent, Rumpus, and even The New York Times. She wrote for Crone Magazine for several years and, with her race-car-driving husband, co-authored Full Circle: A Hands-On Affair with the First Ferarri 250 GTO. Her sixteen poems in The Four Faces of Eve are often filled with laughter. One hears it as she imitates a sexist male (""The Interview"") or remembers a tasty affair (""Chili in Winter""). Her Eve has known abuse (""In the Closet"") and lost loved ones (""Here and Away""). Yet empathy is the deepest quality in Perkins' poems, empathy which enables the poet to become other selves, to see that some ""need solace/ faith magic/ or/ hope"" (""Celestial""). Gail Waldstein's experiences with Eve (life's breath) are complex and unique. The first three of her eighteen poems recreate her Eve's breath-stopping fear of a sexually abusive ""Daddy."" Other poems place her own children--supple and fragile--within a failing marriage, herself deposited in a mental institution. Others speak to her survival and that of her children (""aurora""), But it's poems about her work as a pediatric pathologist that most fully immerse readers in a world where pain feels universal and grief inevitable (""prayer for the light baby""). Waldstein's poetry refuses to simplify or romanticize. Taken together, Boyle, Granville, Perkins and Waldstein give their women readers memorable tributes to (1) shared pain; (2) complicated love; (3) motherhood; (4) resilience; (5) grief; and (6) an enduring and empathetic spirit.

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9781952232954

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Reviews

The powerfully intimate poems in The Four Faces of Eve transport us to another time and place where experiences of love, loss, deep despair, and high hope can be illuminated. What an incredible gift to us! Be prepared to laugh and cry, to discover and savor personal insights as each heartfelt story is devoured. Nancy Saltzman, author of Radical Survivor: One Woman's Path Through Life, Love, and Uncharted Tragedy This collection feels like a mirror shattered on the pavement, reflecting memories and eyes and hands and bellies and toes of different types of women facing myriad violence and myriad joy and continuing to catch the light. Carla Sofia Ferreira, author of A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us

Author Information

PETRA PERKINS is a Colorado author of poetry, fiction, memoir, essay, humor, screen and stage play. After a 25-year career in aerospace engineering and management, she became immersed in more creative pursuits, especially writing. BROOKE GRANVILLE, a Denver native, has been focused on the Denver real estate market for over thirty years, offering expertise in the ever-changing dynamics of the inventory, the infill in the established neighborhoods and the vertical growth the city is adopting. She has been writing poetry for fifty years--about nature, family and relationships. An adoptee, she eventually met her birth mother. It led to connecting with two half-siblings, two aunts and twelve first cousins. She is writing her memoir on finding this family, the reactions and interactions of three generations on both sides of the story. GAIL WALDSTEIN, M.D., was a pediatric pathologist for over 35 years, working at Children's Hospital, Denver most of that time. She also single-parented three children for fifteen of those years. She began creative writing in the late '90s, winning awards for fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. She received fellowships from Colorado Council for the Arts, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation and Rocky Mountain Women's Foundation.

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