Blood Lyrics: Poems

"Katie Ford's is a finely-wrought lyrical beauty, a poetry of detail and care, but she has set it within an epic arc." "Poetry"
""
"""I lie still, play dead, am delivered decree: "
"our daughter weighs seven hundred dimes, "
"paperclips, teaspoons of sugar, "
"this child of grams"
"for which the good nurse"
"laid out her studies"
"as a coin purse"
"into which our tiny wealth clinked, "
"our daughter spilling almost"
"to the floor."
"" from "Of a Child Early Born"

In Katie Ford's third collection, she sets her music into lyrics wrung from the world's dangers. "Blood Lyrics" is a mother's song, one seared with the knowledge that her country wages long, aching wars in which not all lives are equal. There is beauty imparted, too, but it arrives at a cost: "Don't say it's the beautiful / I praise," Ford writes. "I praise the human, / gutted and rising.""