Overview

"It's Not Love, Unfortunately is a volume of poetry that explores experiences with relationships over a span of a lifetime; from finding out early on that moms and dads are not all like Ward and June Cleaver, to learning that boys are after more than friendship in junior high, to marrying at eighteen and learning what an abusive relationship is all about, to finding the survivor within, divorcing, and after years of searching for love...finally coming out around forty years old, the poet finds that relationships with women can be just as frustrating and abusive as those with men...and that no matter what station you are in life, and no matter what side of the fence you sit on...love never comes easy and is even harder to find. Nevertheless, this volume of poems will leave you with a few tears and a few smiles, but will never leave you feeling alone. No matter who you are, if you've ever loved or searched for love you will recognize yourself in these poems. If you're a Baby Boomer, you will find that the poet incorporates a lot of pop culture from the 1960s and 1970s that will bring memories rushing back, if you're a GenXer or a Millennial, you will find there's some familiar territory here for you too, but all readers will find the clear connection is relationships, for better or worse, make us into who we are. If we're lucky, we will have interesting stories (poems) to tell, even if ""it's not love, unfortunately."""

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9781937793500

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"It's Not Love, Unfortunately, chronicles--with candor and in an unguarded voice--the struggle to make a full life in which a woman is both seen and heard. Lylanne Musselman writes of loneliness, disappointment, dread--and of resisting those tyrants who may enter our lives through marriage or other means. Her poem ""The Day Truman Capote Died"" recounts an act of staggering brutality. The brave effort to make ends meet and to meet someone who might return love is captured, with sensitivity and strength, in poem after poem. --Lee Upton, author Visitations: Stories and Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles: Poems In four sections, Lylanne Musselman details the places and memories of baby-boomer youth in the Midwest, shaping the poems' voices with both loneliness and hope. Some lines are particularly haunting, as when a childhood home is characterized as ""a place where all dreams went to die"" or family squabbles leave the impression of ""years of Thanksgiving memories / beneath piles of picked clean / and broken wish-bones."" The frankness of the poetic voice is memorable and sometimes harrowing, speaking out about sexual battery, bullying, a friend hurt by a mean drunk in a bar. This book accepts pain by framing it in sharp observations that recreate the pains, and the insights, for readers. Yes, there are joyous moments--finding Frank O'Hara's poetry, a few good friendships, love of cats, lesbian romance, learning to believe in one's artistic skills. Ultimately, the poet's persona learns to stand up to a restrictive mother and silent father, to claim ""the real me: your talented daughter."" What is earned, above all, is wisdom: the final section shows that the speaker knows herself thoroughly, somehow ""trusting this / new / balance / will carry me / safely onward."" --Jayne Marek, author In and Out of Rough Water (2017) and The Tree Surgeon Dreams of Bowling (2018) Loss and longing reverberate throughout Lylanne Musselman's collection of unflinchingly honest poems about all-too-elusive love and its often-unforeseen consequences. It Isn't Love, Unfortunately chronicles Musselman's connections to family, friends, lovers and other significant others in poems that are at once wryly humorous and full of heartache, spirited as well as thoughtful. What makes these poems truly remarkable is the unstoppable hope of the poet, which pulses within the book like an also-unstoppable heart. This is a generous and welcoming collection that speaks directly to the reader and allows us to share Musselman's experiences and reflections while enabling us to take away what we all need right now: hope. --Jennifer O'Grady, author White and Exclusions & Limitations"

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