Shapiro, Lauren: Brid
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Veliz Books, paperback
Publication Date: February 1, 2024
Publisher Marketing: BRID by Lauren Shapiro explores motherhood, the dissolution of a marriage, and grief through the lens of a shrinking pandemic space. Through a structure that alternates narrative prose poem passages with lyric poems utilizing space on the page, the form attempts to both compress and expand, mimicking the psychological space of the narrator as she moves through these difficult times. BRID examines how relationships change over time—between children and parents as well as couples, and including the narrator's own relationship with herself and her body. PRAISE FOR BRID Lauren Shapiro's Brid is both an intense examination of family life during the pandemic and an extended ars poetica on the role of the artist and the ability of words to accurately represent things that populate the world around us. Even this collection's title is a meditation on the ways language reflects error, "The word bird a mistaken spelling of the original brid. Mistakes channel a world, a worldview. A tear in a web that becomes an ocular hole. A tunnel into new brightness." In this collection, Shapiro captures a child's point of view with stunning clarity while also providing readers with a parent's perspective on isolation, betrayal, and survival. "Even this poem, a distraction / from disaster, knows its limits," states "Is Money Made from Trees? my daughter asks." Brid examines unlikely guideposts such as the changing face of a nearby house seen in different kinds of light, chronicling vulnerabilities yet ultimately residing in a place of newfound wisdom and power. —Mary Biddinger, author of Department of Elegy