The Exchange

"Black's voice is startling, jagged and implacable, and her poetry] is steep, precipitous and dazzling." --Los Angeles Times Book Review

* A finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Poetry *

I took care of myself. I took care
Of myself, thinking much too often

I took care of someone else.
Everything feels like payment.
--from "Pay Attention"

In The Exchange, Sophie Cabot Black explores the surprising interplay between mortality and money, between the next world and this one, between the language of disease and the language of finance. Following a beloved friend through a long illness and eventual loss, these poems confront in stark emotion the aftermath, even as the outside world--the world of debts paid and collected, of power and dominion--intrudes. What is gained and what is sacrificed, and how can those profits and losses be measured when the currency involved is love?

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 05/07/2013
ISBN: 9781555976415
Pages: 88
Weight: 0.36lbs
Size: 8.48h x 6.59w x 0.29d
Award: Lambda Literary Awards - Finalist

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 03/18/2013
Library Journal 05/01/2013 pg. 83