Racing Hummingbirds

Racing Hummingbirds examines, critiques, and at times delights in one woman's navigation through the many worlds of manic depression and her struggle to maintain humanity in the process. Jeanann Verlee's award-winning debut collection is a series of narratives, prayers, and conjurings which address gender, sex, race, poverty, heartbreak, and survival with such stark intimacy, you will find yourself living inside. These poems cannot possibly be about you, yet they are. They cross boundaries and reclaim hope. They are as the opening poem suggests, nothing short of communion.

Recipient of the Independent Publisher Book Award Silver Medal in Poetry.

Reviews

Racing Hummingbirds is a masterful first collection... They are medicine words.
-The Legendary

It's poetry with its teeth bared...completely and unapologetically naked.
-PANK Magazine

...a roller coaster of imagistic magic. Form, language, allusion, and voice interact, collide, shape-shift, and duel...throughout an utterly arresting mosaic.
-Danse Macabre

Fierce and formidable, Jeanann Verlee is poised to make an indelible mark - much like a razor slashing silk - on what's become a comfortably placid poetic landscape.
-Patricia Smith, author of Blood Dazzler and Teahouse of the Almighty

...as visceral and searing as it is compassionate and forgiving.
-Small Press Reviews

...one of the most powerful collections I've ever read.
-Roxane Gay, HTML Giant