Overview

Kim Noriega is masterful at hitting the right tone with her uncompromising stark naming of male-on-female brutality, using a detailed storyteller's specificity that reaches effortlessly into collective experience. She does not shrink from beauty either, a subtle beauty, infused with a sense of familiarity that makes her words feel like home. These are brave poems that tell us the stories that live underneath the surface of our lives.

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Reviews

"""'Name Me, ' the opener of this long-awaited collection, is a tour de force, it storms in with its chilling juxtaposition of romance and violence in the strong, unapologetic voice of a woman. Kim Noriega is masterful at hitting the right tone with her uncompromising stark naming of male-on-female brutality, using a detailed storyteller's specificity that reaches effortlessly into collective experience. She does not shrink from beauty either, a subtle beauty, infused with a sense of familiarity that makes her words feel like home. Home, from the womb to the wedding, abuse, suicides, silences, apples, birthdays, heirlooms, the presence of green, waterfalls, horses, tastes, sensual detail, all of the roses, 'that magical / black rain, / ecstasy, / a flurry of starlings.' I only wish I could inhabit the unashamed, unpitying, beautiful, warm, defiant spirit of this book that rises off it like steam."" -Sarah Luczaj, PhD ""Among the roses that Kim Noriega names, in her first full-length collection of poems, are the bruises that bloom from sexual violence, and the self that blossoms in the aftermath of the effort to love and love again. What strikes me, in so many of these poems, is the speaker's tenderness toward herself and the hurt people who have hurt her, even as she speaks unflinchingly of addiction, dysfunction, and abuse, even as she speaks herself into radiance."" -Cecilia Woloch Praise for Kim's Chapbook Name Me ""These are brave poems that tell us the stories that live underneath the surface of our lives. They show us the vulnerability in a young girl's world: 'What does anyone know of the open palm / her small world rests upon?'; the danger in that world: 'Your hand at the small of my back / your teeth at my throat'; how it is shattered: 'he moves his fingers / to your throat / . . . whispers: / If I squeeze a little harder'; and how it is healed: 'It was you, beloved, / who taught the trees / my name.' These are poems that matter."" -Ellen Bass"

Author Information

"Kim Noriega is an award-winning poet, creative nonfiction writer, and teacher. She has won the San Miguel Literary Sala Flash Nonfiction Prize and has been a finalist for both the Edna St. Vincent Millay and Joy Harjo Poetry Prizes. Her poem ""Heaven, 1963"" was featured in former poet laureate Ted Kooser's syndicated column ""American Life in Poetry."" She is the poetry editor of The Poetry Distillery and a teaching artist with The Poetry Barn. She is a certified facilitator of the creative regeneration process and an expert-consultant infamily literacy through the Pacific Library Partnership. She lives in San Diego with her husband, Ernie, and six cats, five of whom were once feral. More at Kimnoriega.com."

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