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apocrifa

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apocrifa is a nongendered love story told in verse, the journey of a lover and their beloved finding each other, falling apart, and then creating their own way to love together.
  • 16 May 2023
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apocrifa imagines a love that sits comfortably at the crossroads of commitment and freedom. The developing intimacy between a lover and their beloved is propelled by a compendium of words for love, romance, sex, relationships, and affection that do not lend to direct translation in English. Serving as both titles and markers of the progression of time, these poetically defined words highlight the growing tension of one who claims “i cannot love you enough/to unlove the wide world” and yet is inextricably drawn to the offer of “a place of sustenance, rest, and my delight in your very bones.” Heavily inspired by the metaphors and structures of Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon), from the Apocryphal books of the Bible, the characters speak to each other with contrapuntal call-and-response while letting us into their private thoughts through epistles, sestinas, odes, and other poetic forms.
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Price: $16.95
Pages: 96
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Imprint: Red Hen Press
Publication Date: 16 May 2023
Trim Size: 6.50 X 6.50 in
ISBN: 9781636280639
Format: Paperback
BISACs: POETRY / American / African American & Black, POETRY / Women Authors, POETRY / LGBTQ+
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"The expansive and formally inventive second collection from Flame (Ordinary Cruelty) considers the cornerstones of romance—doubt, surrender, grief, resolution—through poems about hunger, exploration, and forbidden fruit." —Publishers Weekly


"Shedding genre labels, this book is about love — a big topic, and Flame leans fully into the nuance... [drawing] on a deep well of available (yet still never quite enough) words around love, from languages all over the world. It's an experimental yet accessible book that captures the complexity of human connection and emotion." —Sarah Nielson, The Seattle Times