Thornwork

THE BOOK: Thornwork

PUBLISHED IN: 2020

THE AUTHOR:  Ruth Baumann

THE EDITOR: Diane Goettel

THE PUBLISHER: Black Lawrence Press

SUMMARY: Thornwork is a book of poetry that explores relationships, codependency, longing, and artificial and real connection. The poems center around what it means to realize ways you’re seeking love are unhealthy and/ or stunted, and how to move towards cleaner, more genuine love. 

THE BACK STORY: Several years ago, I started to really look at my relationships and my behavior in them. I realized that there was a lot of room for growth, and that also there was grief that needed to happen before I could make true healthy connections (at least romantically). These poems come out of that period– some are essentially autobiographical, but also there is a large prose poem envisioning the perspective of a drunk mother, which is fictional and seeks to interrogate both ways that we limit ourselves and ways that societal roles might limit us. The long poem also tries to see the true love and the goodness that persist despite our human limitations, which is what all of these poems want to do– find what is genuine and nourish that, while grieving and acknowledging what must be left behind. 

WHY THIS TITLE?: The period of time when I wrote the book was difficult, and it was often not pleasant work to look deep into my relationships and my past. It was work and it was thorny, so I combined the two to try to represent it accurately.

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? Somebody who is interested in poetry, in little distillations of emotion and growth (and maybe even spirituality, hopefully), might like it. Somebody who has considered their own relationships, their own behaviors towards others, and sought to deepen their own ability to connect genuinely and less selfishly, might like it. Somebody interested in a healthy definition of nurturing or love might like it. 

REVIEW COMMENTS: 

“‘I know as much as I know, ‘ Baumann writes, ‘and still get out of bed.’ And what trauma survivor has not marveled at this exact triumph? THORNWORK is a rigorous examination of the abundant hunger of both body and psyche to survive. This generous work confronts our inadequacies: ‘We have tried you, language, but you have not been enough, ‘ and nurtures even our most imperceptible efforts: ‘I have almost enough courage to keep walking myself home, ‘ offering a realistic portrait of the untidy endeavor to persevere.”–Jeanann Verlee

“THORNWORK sings to the soft sleeping animal at the center of us all, and shows us that to love wrongly is still to love. It’s a eulogy for the former self, a prayer, a ghost story. This is an urgent, spell-binding book.” –Meg Freitag

“Ruth Baumann’s THORNWORK is painted with vertiginous desires, ‘I wake up how a thief wakes up, one want at a time.’ These poems explore what happens when we harm for or are harmed by that which we desire–‘god is not a pitcher plant / It’s us humans that eat each other.’ Baumann leads us into a world that is both familiar and foggy, both lonely and suffocating, a world where ‘Life fidgets everywhere.’ It isn’t Baumann’s job to lead us back out–she is here to tell us what’s at stake, she is here to show us the ‘new angles.’ Come in and have a look around. ‘Make a sudden noise. See which animals in us come out.'”–Paige Lewis.

AUTHOR PROFILE: I am a poet living in Tallahassee, Florida, with two cats and occasionally some yard possums, raccoons, hares, and- once!- an armadillo. I have a PhD from Florida State University and an MFA from the University of Memphis, and have written one other full length collection (Parse, Black Lawrence Press, 2018) and five chapbooks. I am interested in how poetry can help move me towards more honesty and clarity, and hopefully compassion.
  
AUTHOR COMMENTS: I see this as something of a sequel to my first poetry collection. Parse deals with addiction and trauma, and Thornwork deals largely with what happens next. Its main speaker is concerned with how to reconcile past griefs with a current desire to have healthy and loving relationships, and to show up as whole as possible.

SAMPLE POEMS:

Accident Report

.

Our heads, sweet-ish, sought pillows.

.

Light bent itself to get through the barred windows,

even in night, even alone,

.

a single prophecy of light wondering

if it was insane, to keep going.

.

The world outside set itself

like the broken bone it was,

.

but it had no doctors, & it did

what we all do with no expertise

.

& scrappy, childish pride—

it made new hurts, defended the wounds.

 

Poem, Tentative

.

Outside of my comfort zone, a wide eagle in the half-moon’s fluorescence.

.

A longstanding breath. The arrogance of me & me & me

.

every time I really think I know. But maybe, in this galaxy,

.

I’ll be given this chance. Not to disappear & not to capture.

.

To say to the birds, to all the birds, I’m okay right here,

.

since facing the gulf is far divorced from numbness at the gulf.

 

Continuance

.

Hope like a rodent walking through my head.

.

So long they said when you’re older.  I’m older

.

& I know as much as I know & still I get out of bed.

.

The sun knitting bright, its needles caught

.

on a Florida porch. I have a feeling I say.

.

& that’s how every story starts: a piercing,

.

a breathing, an unfixed believing.

 

WHERE TO BUY IT: Black Lawrence Press, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Bookshop, or Small Press distribution.https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/thornwork/ ; https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/thornwork-ruth-baumann/1136816823?ean=9781625578150 ; https://www.amazon.com/Thornwork-Ruth-Baumann/dp/1625578156/ ; https://bookshop.org/books/thornwork/9781625578150 ; https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9781625578150/thornwork.aspx

PRICE: 16.95

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: www.ruthbaumann.com ; twitter: @ruthisruthis; instagram: @ruthbaumannjoysmom