i am this girl

gina marie bernard's i am this girl is a triumph of truth and language, forging with fierce determination a no-punches pulled telling of a "tortured son" rising and "bleeding now as a daughter." From ashes, divination, and shattered glass, the self in this collection is summoned and examined with sincere scrutiny, in a land of tortured beauty where "[d]ecisions float on beds of glacial regret." This exploration is not for the faint of heart, and the heart of bernard's work is a "knee deep and thirsty" desire to drench us in longing-a longing to be completely seen and heard. With incredible skill and execution, bernard wraps us in the cocoon of her passionate pleas-impossible to emerge untouched, anything less than transformed.-Jen Rouse, author of Cake gina marie bernard's i am this girl takes my breath away. The speaker "[conceives] a second language," and it is through this language that we experience the speaker's struggle with identity, failed love, and anxiety; but we also experience lushness: "areolas aching," "dreams fan[ning] alluvial," and "night[s]/ of sage and purple rock." This syntax has a pulse, and it isn't going to shy away from either difficulty or beauty. This voice is compelling and spellbinding-i am this girl is stunning. -Flower Conroy, author of The Awful Suicidal Swans These poems by gina marie bernard demonstrate emotional intelligence and diamond grit. Both erudite and raw, the poems' richly textured language and precise images reveal the full human voice. At times achingly painful, and other times brash and bravely personal, bernard drops the curtain on shame, and openly courts redemption on the grounds of humans being-always beyond gender-both soul and body, terrifying in our need and love of absolute loyalty to that whole, and to each other. -Carol Ann Russell, author of Gypsy Taxi et. al.