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Poetry Canadian

Love Will Burst Into a Thousand Shapes

by (author) Jane Eaton Hamilton

Publisher
Caitlin Press
Initial publish date
Sep 2014
Category
Canadian
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781927575574
    Publish Date
    Sep 2014
    List Price
    $16.95

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Description

Art, children, marriage, breaking, rejoicing. Love is a many-branched tree and in Hamilton's newest poetry collection, her third, it's autumn or winter, the winds are kicking up and branches are flying everywhere - bursting into a thousand shapes. Or maybe it's Hamilton's heart that explodes into many dimensions. Tender, furious, grief-stricken, witty, urbane, elegiac, political, personal, erotic - these poems are all those things. Hamilton can't stop loving big no matter how chancy it is. All these shapes lend raw material for a poem: Mothers lose their babies. A boy loses his leg to war. A girl hides from serial killer Richard Speck. A virgin gets pregnant. A partner mourns a death at Walkerton. Women tumble into love, celebratory and foolhardy. Frank and elemental, love will burst into a thousand shapes reminds us that life is worth everything we can throw at it.

About the author

Jane Eaton Hamilton is the queer, non-binary, disabled author of nine books of creative non-fiction, memoir, fiction and poetry, including the 2016 novel Weekend, and two prior collections of short fiction. Their memoir was one of the UK Guardian’s Best Books of the Year and a Sunday Times bestseller. They are the two-time winner of Canada’s CBC Literary Award for fiction (2003/2014). They have had a Notable in BASS and three in BAE (2016/2018/2019) and have appeared in The Journey Prize, Best Canadian Short Stories and Best Canadian Poetry. They live near Vancouver, BC.

 

Jane Eaton Hamilton's profile page

Editorial Reviews

"love will burst into a thousand shapes is jazzy and engaging. Hamilton proves herself to be a real wordsmith, with a trickster's soul and a heart as big as New Mexico. The poems are enlightening, risky, rough, funny as hell, and ultimately very moving."

--Barry Dempster

“Artful and globetrotting poetic exploration of matters of the heart runs the gamut. Yes, there’s excitement (“Tomorrow I will show you to everyone I love / and dream of marrying you”) and erotic highs (“she peeled me so I came apart / in sections juicy and dripping through her hands”). But there are plenty of end-of-romance lows too.”

–Brett Josef Grubisic, Xtra West

“The open-hearted poetry […] delighted me. Hamilton’s enthusiasm for life and language is infectious in this collection, which celebrates art, life and love […]Hamilton is a poet deserving of a larger US audience.”

–Julie R. Enszer, Lambda Literary

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