Silence. Disaster. Desire. Hope. These cardinal directions navigated by Sandra Yannone?s Boats for Women
plot intersections and transgressions of the personal and historical
like a cartographer drafting a nautical chart. Utilizing a range of free
verse and traditional forms, Yannone?s poems transmit distress calls
from the decks of R.M.S. Titanic and other maritime disasters; they
channel Bess Houdini's crossover into the modern world; and they
document how women discover and recover from the intimacies of loving
each other through time. Divided into four sections, Boats for Women
amplifies and survives the split-second when the everyday turns into
catastrophe; the moment of impact when knowing and unknowing collide;
the fusion of before and after. And after that. All constellate here in
Yannone?s first full-length collection to orient us toward that ?choice/
to turn toward a sacred face, a turn// toward your own longing to
live.?