Overview

Reading this unguent, burning swath of highly original poems by writer Lucy Logsdon, each one eats into one's heart, sears and melts into one's consciousness as if placed into a crucible. Logsdon's subjects range wide and fierce: accepting spanking rather than detention while in grade school; struggles while recovering from addition; disillusionment of divorce and the ravages it places on trust, expectation, and one's psyche. How strongly should we stand up to authority? What are the limits of trust? Can we ever truly know another human being? To be a woman is to feel trapped in the web of expectations put in place by men and society. Logsdon shows how one may break free by the sheer will of one's own being. But there will be repercussions, both outward and inward, chosen and so self-inflicted, a price for such freedoms. What befalls us from our decisions? These visceral poems reveal both the glee and pain that ensues from her choices, as a strong woman navigating through this insane, unwieldy world. But it is the love and ferocity of this poets's unexpected responses, a tiger smashing against its cage, that leaves us breathless, astounded, amazed.

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9781953136701

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Reviews

""I am myself, but a new construction,"" Lucy Logsdon writes in this deep, forthright, and firmly constructed book of changes, of loss and self-definition, of grief and resurgence. The Stone in My Shoe is a courageous, high-stake, unflinching book of salvations. Edward Hirsch, author of Gabriel: A Poem and The Heart of American Poetry Lucy Logsdon's ferociously introspective poems sear us as we read The Stone in My Shoe-leaving nothing unscathed. This writer lets rip with a gasoline candidness on topics from a love letter to her surgeon to her choice, no, desire for corporal punishment in school in The Bad Girl. These poems shock us with their honesty and surprise us with their unexpected involutions of choice that chops off our expectation, leaving us to hold like a severed limb the uncanniness of where she has taken us, inside her pain, clutching tight our tourniquets. Kurt Lovelace author of Halfway Between Everywhere

Author Information

Logsdon's poetry is often inspired by experiences she has had growing up in Southern Illinois, as well as her life as a whole. ""My work draws to some extension my rural experiences, particularly the isolation, which always makes the rest of the world seem so odd to me,"" Logsdon said. ""These poems also draw, often, on my experiences as a woman grappling with the modern world. I sometimes use personas to speak the ideas of my poems."" Lucy received a MacDowell Fellowship and has taught at The Frost Place. She received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University.

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