Overview

The Five Stages of Stuttering is a poetic exploration of the connection between stuttering and grief. Stuttering is a fluency disorder. It is an interruption of the flow of speaking. A verbal paralysis. ""I had to start where-where-where I left off,"" Cassie Holguin-Pettinato writes. The emotional pain of her words is exacerbated with every repetition. Her poems about family estrangement, chronic pain, divorce, postpartum depression, and unspoken traumas are interrupted with blockages and interjections. What if poetry itself is a form of disfluency commonly referred to as stuttering? ""I couldn't speak the language of my mother. And so I hid the sacred clown in me."" Stuttering is a form of disconnection from the original tongue. Snippets of a foreign language become bullets in times of war. Holguin-Pettinato's poetry is deeply rooted in place yet simultaneously estranged from it. ""There is no grave to visit the living/Here."" The poet needs to go through all the stages of grief-denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance-before she can finally begin to find her voice. ""I want [ ] peace,"" Cassie Holguin-Pettinato writes. ""Sadness is on me for a little while."" The final stage of grief and stuttering is acceptance and revision. And then the poetry begins.

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9781963245370

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Reviews

The Five Stages of Stuttering is by far, one of the strongest voices of an emerging poet that I have read. Language lulls and sings. There is a linguistic playfulness despite thespeaker's losses, both psychological and physical. The musicality and successful use of experimental forms, paired with a poignant reality, provide insight and wisdom. -Sheryl Luna, author of Magnificent Errors, Seven, Pity the Drowned Horse A fearless examination of grief and trauma stretching like a shadow across the speaker's language. The poems weave this shadow in patterns of silence and noise with unique syntax and repetition. They define again and again the source of grief in attempts to exorcise it. Despite the resistance of their stutter, these poems scream - are chants and spells toward healing. ""I'm a singing hammer / wanting to be beautiful again -"" Holguin-Pettinato writes. This is an exquisite collection! -Aldo Amparán, author of Brother Sleep

"The Five Stages of Stuttering is by far, one of the strongest voices of an emerging poet that I have read. Language lulls and sings. There is a linguistic playfulness despite thespeaker's losses, both psychological and physical. The musicality and successful use of experimental forms, paired with a poignant reality, provide insight and wisdom. -Sheryl Luna, author of Magnificent Errors, Seven, Pity the Drowned Horse A fearless examination of grief and trauma stretching like a shadow across the speaker's language. The poems weave this shadow in patterns of silence and noise with unique syntax and repetition. They define again and again the source of grief in attempts to exorcise it. Despite the resistance of their stutter, these poems scream - are chants and spells toward healing. ""I'm a singing hammer / wanting to be beautiful again -"" Holguin-Pettinato writes. This is an exquisite collection! -Aldo Ampar�n, author of Brother Sleep"

Author Information

Cassie Holguin-Pettinato is a Chicana poet, collage artist, and theremin player living in the El Paso/Juárez frontera. She is a fourth-generation resident of La Calavera, the last remaining neighborhood of El Paso's historic Smeltertown. She is the author of The Lamb's Tail (Bottlecap Press, 2022), which looks into the inner landscape of emotions, unspoken pain, and family history. Her most recent book Ode To My Black Child: An Illustrated Poem (Bottlecap Press, 2022) is a story about a mother's love, birth trauma and postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter Sonnet. Cassie graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso with a BA in Creative Writing and a minor in Museum Studies. Her poetry and art have appeared in Chrysalis, Chismosa Press, and an anthology titled ""American Graveyard, Calls To End Gun Violence,"" published by Read or Green Books. In 2008, she co-founded a literary center at El Paso Community College with Ysella Fulton-Slavin called ""Papagayo,"" which provided writing workshops, community service hours, and literary events. Cassie is currently an academic writing tutor at the El Paso Community College and gives poetry and collage workshops.

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