Lakes, Elizabeth Deanna Morris: Ashley Sugarnotch and the Wolf

Mason Jar Press, paperback

Publication Date: April 14, 2020

Publisher Marketing: 

In the mythic world of Ashley Sugarnotch & the Wolf, two characters are cosmically intertwined, both moored to their past and to the expectations of society. Through syllabic and prose poems, the collection asks questions about what happens when people find themselves in a cycle of violence. Myths, retold over centuries, also mean that these cycles repeat through the storytelling. Both Ashley and the Wolf are modern, but they are forever tied to their myth.

These powerful poems surge through the branches of three electrifying speakers—the doomed young Ashley, the deadly Wolf, the insightful author herself—and deftly sound the mythic depths of their existential and embodied desires. The cyclical wisdom of Ashley Sugarnotch & the Wolf is hard-won. Its riverbed is rich with grit and wonder, with grief and heart. Wade in; Morris Lakes will make you feel it where it hurts. —Joseph Scapellato, author of The Made-Up Man

Visceral and new—Morris Lakes’ collection uses multiple speakers, an overtold fairy tale, and a wide river to absorb and interrogate the cost of suffering. —Monica Prince, author of Instructions for Temporary Survival

Elizabeth Deanna Morris Lakes is a thoughtful and careful writer who writes not towards firm conclusion, but instead eagerly towards a consistently blooming imagination. —Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Fortune For Your Disaster

These persona poems, deft in their ability to evoke both fear and the eerily familiar, reckon with the everyday violence of rape culture, like a myth we keep repeating, and ask why nothing ever changes. —Ruth Awad, author of Set to Music a Wildfire