Pretty Tripwire

by Alessandra Lynch

In Lynch’s fourth collection, we carefully navigate the fine line between terror and beauty as we face palpable trauma, heartbreak, and wild astonishment through the raw and personal poems. The genuine, delicate voice works to examine who we are, after everything.

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

First published January 19, 2021

Reviews

[Amie Whittemore · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really lovely collection. I enjoyed how unique it was in terms of structure, with long poems leading the way into sections with shorter poems. It was a pattern I don't typically see in poetry books and certainly worthy of further examination. I also appreciated the way these poems reached back to explore coming of age and eating disorders and showed, at a kind of slant, how the speaker in these poems integrated these traumas, in the search--and I'd say finding--of a strong sense of self.

[chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let the empty swings sway
Let streetlights dim
Let the wind and mousy-haired rain and even the sun eat away at me
-- "Thinning"

God messing with ropes. God hanging a human body from a wire. God in that wire. God dazzling himself to oblivion.
-- "Hymnal"

That such a tiny heart can carry all that noise
and fly.
-- "Worry"

[Carly Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

My goodness, this book. A book that gives permission and new pathways for the lyric poem.