Bone Valley Hymnal arrives from the molten core of Utah's arid landscapes. Here, with the fossils mothers pass down to their daughters Franson-Thiel weaves hymns of heritage and gender performativity. In a pursuit to reconcile the self from one's ancestry, she unearths a "line of graves/a long ribcage". These poems present compelling connections between science, gender, faith, and myth-making. Fans of the work of Alda Merini, K-Ming Chang, and Emily Skaja will enjoy the electric and surprising imagery of Franson-Thiel's poetry.
Taylor Franson-Thiel is a Pushcart-nominated poet from Utah, now based in Virginia, where she lives with her partner. She received her Master's in creative writing from Utah State University and is currently an MFA poetry candidate at George Mason University. She is the former Poetry Editor of Unfortunately, Literary Magazine and current Assistant Poetry Editor for phoebe, as well as an editorial reader for Poetry Daily. She placed second in the 2024 Bethesda Poetry Contest and won the 2024 GMU Rinehart Poetry Prize. Her work can be found or is forthcoming at, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, SoFloPoJo, The Shore, the museum of americana, and Identity Theory.
"In these poems of Taylor Franson-Thiel's, there is a fierceness and fearless vulnerability, a generosity of spirit and poetic brilliance that resonate in a voice erupting through poetic convention, where family, heritage, landscape, religion, patriarchy, and violence are interrogated, blown apart, internalized, made a part of the body, made body parts, and reconfigured into a new myth of being alive in a body holding fast to what it means to love and be loved. In these poems, tenderness and revolution walk hand in hand." — Michael Sowder, author of The Empty Boat and House Under the Moon
"In Bone Valley Hymnal, Taylor Franson grapples with ancestral legacies of violence, from ancient Viking mother conquerors to the more recent Mormon victims of statewide extermination orders. 'Somewhere inside me is a watershed rivering/apart my family line,' she writes. 'The lineage of water—/a burden I have forgotten how to carry.' Against the desert landscape of Utah, Franson explores questions of faith and doubt, safety and desire, and mortality and grief, drawing upon matrilineal inheritances of resilience to consider how we survive patriarchal abuse and oppression. These formally varied, sonically resonant poems, delivered in the structure of a hymnbook, offer a haunting language of covenant, sacrament, and prophecy as they meditate on the body and all it survives. In this collection, Franson debuts as the gifted and bold voice of a generation with blood as its birthrite." — Alyse Knorr, author of Super Mario Bros. 3, Ardor, and Wolf Tours
"In Bone Valley Hymnal, Taylor Franson-Thiel shuttles the lyric forward and backward in time, as if weaving a new garment for a voice awakened—a new garment, a body of hymns that 'exiles untruth like skin rejects a graft.'" — Peter Strekfus, author of The Cuckoo (Yale Series of Younger Poets), and Errings
"The poems in Taylor Franson-Thiel 's Bone Valley Hymnal are unquestionably lyric poems, by which I mean not only do they carry with them the quality of song, but that the songs feel as though they arrive to us from somewhere deep within, somewhere possibly unknown but undoubtedly felt. As Franson-Thiel explores back past her own existence, listening for her ancestors' advice and inspiration, whether a 'believer' or 'faint-of-heart follower,' this brave book 'grasp at wisps' and sings out into our present tense. Listen, reader. You are in for a treat." — Sally Keith, River House, Two of Everything, and The Fact of the Matter
"The emotional forces of ancestral calamities converge with lyrical power. These poems escort the reader into a world of devastating yet stunning perseverance where the physical body and lineage become a constitution of fierce hymns during these unprecedented times." — Regie Cabico, author of A Rabbit In Search of a Rolex
