Cry Back My Sea

More about the book

Stunning poems of obsession, loss, and the desire for a renewed self, from the award-winning poet“I thought I had left behind the darkness / of the heart,” Arvio confesses in the poem “Small War.” The love Arvio traces in these pages is indeed a battle, one in which the best-laid plans are shattered. Rarely has a poet tackled intimate love with so much invention and bravery.In poem after poem, we meet the troubling lover whose nearness and force undoes her. There are moments of “my naked body and budding pleasure / in the weather of your presence. / Not whether your presence but how.” The voice is vulnerable, self-knowing, often funny; the poet seems to be writing these poems to save herself from a devastating passion. Her weapons are a cascade of brash, freely spoken lines and a powerful command of metaphor, wielded in a search for meaning and understanding.These breathtaking love poems make the collection Arvio’s most universal to date.