Wake
Who is female death and how do we find her and her monstrous friends? This new collection explores figures of lady-death such as Inanna, Persephone, and others where death is mother, sister, and girl. New from Aldrich Press, Wake traces such myths as the hero’s journey, a descent into and out of the underworld, and a return to the land of the living where monsters still chase us even after we return. It is a dark story, piercing and magical.
With nods to fairy tales, mythology, and Emily Dickinson, Wake imagines a female Death, both tender and brutal, at one moment the hand “pushing hair behind my ear” and at the next the sexual aggressor who “tries to maneuver my lips to steal my breath, / to give me the tongue she doesn’t have.” In Wake, the underworld is “a symbol of what can’t be / faced direct without a dying, but we face it dying.” Emerging from that place, the poems’ narrators meet monsters both fantastic and familial and discover not only lurking threats but also the possibility of laughter after death.
- Jennifer Perrine
In Laura Madeline Wiseman’s latest collection, Death and her monstrous cohorts take us on a mythic journey into the underworld and back. This is book of the dead who are inside us, who “live in our muscles and bones.” It’s wild ride, this undertaking—a trip that leaves us reeling in a wake of dreams.
- Grace Bauer
Who would have thought an exploration of death narratives could be so engrossing? From the “ladies of death” who ride in carts, “bow held at the ready,” to those who are “part of our muscles and bones,” to the lady who says she’ll be a “long lost twin-sister,” death in these poems is no stereotyped “cloak and scythe,” no “lone man.” Laura Madeline Wiseman tackles this most difficult of subjects with intelligence, wit, and imaginative verve as she takes us on a bracing journey through ancient and contemporary myths surrounding the subject of death.
- Wendy Barker
Book Trailer
Video Readings
Interviews & Reviews
Joshua Gray’s Blog
Rhizomatic Ideas
Wake Audio
Before Death
I
Museo de la Muerta
In the House of Death
The File on which Death Stands
To Approach Death, I Take a Drink
Or to Release Death
To Become the Lady of Death
Riding Shotgun with Death
Death’s Blow
Befriending Death
Kissing Death
Death at My Shoulder
La Petite Mort
Death in the Midwest
Death’s Bed
With Death at the Funeral Home
Coupling with Death
Praying for Death
II
Permission
The Protégée
Death’s House
Considering Lore
Anthology of the Dead
How They Watched
Considering Snow White
Self-Mutilators
In Her Basement Bedroom
Considering The Little Mermaid
Sister Death
Cross
Considering Medea
Unsaid Negative Confession: We Hate You
Weighing of Her Heart, Her Eyes
Death’s Cameras
III
Monstrous Past
Preference
Defining Monster
Barren Monsters
Trapdoor Monster
Monster Crush
Book of Monsters
Local Monsters
Warning
Entrance to Death
IV
Laughing After Death