{"product_id":"the-body-is-where-it-all-begins-9798348501747","title":"The body is where it all begins","description":"\u003cp\u003eMarcy Rae Henry sings so much more than the body electric; she sings a cuerpo bilingue, a body gone awry amid perimenopause, a body nevertheless moonbright and halfnaked among the sagebrush. Henry peppers the poems of this scintillating chapbook with evocative housings and tangible accoutrements: a golden scarab in Egypt, the telltale signs of downsized childhood (\"dry foods, frozen fruit, \/ packets of vegetable soup\"), the \"pastel art and fake plants\" of a mammogram waiting room. Henry's lyrics bridge English and Spanish like the open-ended promise of a multilingual lifespan, which is to say they are pointed and timely and yield surprising portmanteaus: \"vaccine which is vacuna \/ in Spanish and sounds like a cow in a cradle.\" Her speakers confuse want for want \u003cem\u003e(\"quiero querer \u003c\/em\u003emeans i want to want \/ but could also mean i want to love\") and wound (as in \"tightly\") for wound (as in \"painful\"). They traverse the planet in search of-and escaping from-lovers like time-traveling globetrotters, arriving finally in a tightly composed ekphrasis in response to Dieter Roth's \u003cem\u003eKarnickelk?ttelkarnickel, \u003c\/em\u003ea poem that centers around the reappearance of an ex and the summer solstice in Iceland, where the \"midnight sun stayed in the sky the way a flag stays on the moon.\" Whether luminously celestial or seared into the heart's memory, Marcy Rae Henry reminds us that \"the body is where it all begins.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e-Diego B?ez, author of\u003cem\u003e Yaguaret? White: Poems\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePrepare yourself, reader. These are not poems that sit still on the page. No, these poems are dancers-leaping, twisting, roaming, and firmly rooted in the body. Henry's quick-witted and effusive voice jet?'s expertly between English and Spanish; surprising imagery and unexpected allusion; personal narrative and philosophical insight. Whether considering mental health, travel, rabbits, sex, mammographs, relationships, or evolution-this is a poet deeply alive in the absurdity, eroticism, and beauty of the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e-Teresa Dzieglewicz, author of \u003cem\u003eSomething Small of How to See a River\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Querencia Press, LLC\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/14\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798348501747\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 58\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.15lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 6.50h x 6.50w x 0.12d","brand":"Marcy Rae Henry","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45150679957685,"sku":"9798348501747","price":11.9,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/img_341ad237-7aea-405d-a14c-c8ab0359f6dd.jpg?v=1741104907","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/the-body-is-where-it-all-begins-9798348501747","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}