Bruised Gospel

by Sarah Alcaide-Escue

A compact lyric field guide, Bruised Gospel explores the immanent terrain of ancestry and ecology at a crossroads.

Praise for Bruised Gospel

“This is the poetry of pressure, uncontainable lyrics so tightly constructed they explode through a world injured and marked by its injuries, but healing and filled with the most wondrous light.” – Jay Hopler, author of The Abridged History of Rainfall

“If, in this unfolding new year, I can find the faith to pray again, it will be a bruised prayer, and if I find the voice to share the good news, it will be a bruised gospel. Sarah Escue’s poems are a flame on my tongue, a hymn to unity.” – J’lyn Chapman, author of To Limn/Lying In

“In Bruised Gospel, Escue bridges the tender and the terrible, exploring and examining the sadnesses and slow glories that bind us together. Like Louise Gluck’s work, these delicate yet deliberate poems transform image into meaning, recording the moment of realization and leaving the reader more fully alive.” – Emma Bolden, author of House is an Enigma

“Through permutations of the elements into language, the generation of sentience submerged into matter, and the alchemy of decay, the incantatory lyrics of Bruised Gospel find "rebirth through refuge," taking up "again this body / occupied by many mouths," becoming "glass shattered," or dissolving, however transiently, ‘into this tilted hour.’” – Jonathan Simkins, author of This is the Crucible

“Bruised Gospel takes notes from Sylvia Plath, weaving baskets out of broken thatch, making a toy out of a misshapen chair, reclaiming identity through deconstruction. Escue writes the image at the edge: of birth and death, plain and forest, water and shore. Like stardust in the alpine dew, Bruised Gospel proclaims the reworking of potential into energy, picking up dead lines and branches to weave a wreath, a collage, a photograph, a poem.” – Robert Eric Shoemaker, author of We Knew No Mortality

"Bruised Gospel, a gorgeous meditation on the darkened landscape of the natural world, is filled with images and language so deft and ethereal it will be difficult to not hold your breath while reading. With luscious lyrical precision, Sarah Escue’s poems brand the arrival of a poet whose work will needle its way into your mind, demanding your complete attention." – Christina Mun-Lutz , Editor-in-Chief of VIDA Review

Genres: Poetry

40 pages, Paperback

Published June 20, 2020

Reviews

[Bobbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I reread this book tonight and am still in awe of the language, the style, and the beauty.

[Kristiane Weeks-Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bruised Gospel by Sarah Alcaide-Escue is a poetic homage to quiet spaces and contemplation, to softness. Alcaide-Escue’s poems read like whispered hymns in the dark, calling out nature’s beauty, as in “Tsuku Tsuku Boshi,” where the speaker pleads “Undress me slowly / like cicadas undress / sweaty cobalt skies late-July.” Nature is the subject of this gospel overall, and Alcaide-Escue lovingly blurs nature and human images together, where the ‘I’ speaker navigates spaces full of trees, flowers, soil, rivers, herbs, just to name a few. Bruised Gospel is also a call to action to go into green pockets across the globe from Thailand to the Hillsborough River, to the Himalayas, to many forests. While the tone of Bruised Gospel is mostly meditative and misty, there are sharp and loud moments, as when the speaker “smashed / the television with your mother’s / vintage lamp” (‘Shell), but even this poem ends softly, with images of “a dropped nightgown on hardwood. / An afternoon’s ripe hue…”. Like static air as a storm rolls toward you, like dust drifting in a high alpine forest, Bruised Gospel moves slowly along, like a body pushes past aches, searching for peace and captivated by it all.

[Amanda Sunshine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal reading experience! Cannot wait to read more from this writer. I can only imagine what's next. A must-read for poetry lovers especially those with an interest in womanhood, motherhood, nature and internal landscape of the human experience.

[Halah]

Stunning.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deep formal awareness and lyric conscience; profoundly moving without trying to move, a rare sort of permission to feel. This is poetry of witness and non-judgement, in the contemplative sense, replete with moral clarity. A thin volume of native grace.