New poems by Elizabeth C. Garcia. Sandra Meek writes, "Clear-eyed and insightful, these startlingly honest poems examine what it means to be mother, writer, self, a body's archive of memory, when even 'firmament' offers no safe ground, but 'any moment / could swallow you.' Still, through language, the natural world, and human connection, 'the wide tent of each other,' these poems seek a way 'to learn // what resurrection must look like, / how lightning's bright erasures / can bring you to the brink, and allow you, / again and again, to start over.'"
Katie Manning, editor of Whale Road Review, notes, "In Resurrected Body, Elizabeth Garcia offers us one vivid version of what to expect from parenthood based on the experiences of both mother and child.... These poems weave together God, Mary Shelley, autobiography, and more, and the results are intriguing and surprising." Winner of the 2023 Cider Press Review Editors' Prize.
Elizabeth Cranford Garcia is the author of the chapbook Stunt Double (Finishing Line Press, 2016) and recipient of the 2022 Banyan Poetry Prize. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and has appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Tar River Poetry, RHINO, Portland Review, CALYX, Chautauqua, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, SoFloPoJo, Mom Egg Review, and Psaltery & Lyre among others, as well as Fire in the Pasture: 21st Century Mormon Poets. She is currently a Ph.D. student at Georgia State and a mother of three. This is her first collection.
"How high motherhood ranks among the muses poets keep returning to matters little to the challenge poets face: how to make it new? Sing, as Elizabeth Garcia does, from the mouth of mothers who have become 'an archive, / evidence of all the bodies [they have] given / and received.' Believe, as these speakers do, that what restores the body beyond the hope of resurrection is language, making words 'a matter of sticks to gather up and burn.' This is astounding work: funny, fractured, patient, as close to life and time as any parent is, watching her child at play: 'one muscle of present tense, / her hair carrying / the light.'" - Mario Chard
"'You will be spatchcocked / your sternum, your backbone scissored out,' Elizabeth Garcia's remarkable collection Resurrected Body begins. Clear-eyed and insightful, these startlingly honest poems examine what it means to be mother, writer, self, a body's archive of memory, when even 'firmament' offers no safe ground, but 'any moment / could swallow you.' Still, through language, the natural world, and human connection, 'the wide tent of each other,' these poems seek a way 'to learn // what resurrection must look like, / how lightning's bright erasures / can bring you to the brink, and allow you, / again and again, to start over.'" - Sandra Meek
"In Resurrected Body, Elizabeth Garcia offers us one vivid version of what to expect from parenthood based on the experiences of both mother and child. 'Here I bear every imaginable load,' she writes in 'Motherhood as Safety Coffin.' These poems weave together God, Mary Shelley, autobiography, and more, and the results are intriguing and surprising. I have no doubt that you will, like me, find yourself mesmerized by the stories and voices in this book." - Katie Manning
