The Real Warnings

by Rhett Iseman Trull

Poetry. Winner of the 2008 Anhinga Prize for Poetry selected by Sheryl St. Germain. Open this book up anywhere and you'll find a poem of fierce and uncompromising energy and insight, a poem that doesn't pull any punches or take any prisoners, a poem that will both stun and uplift, even as it wounds and sometimes descends into darkness. "I've never read a poet who understands more fully the brutal paradoxes of love and of loving damaged things, nor have I ever read one whose epiphanies felt truer. Even more than the real warnings, this collection represents the real thing and you'll be changed by reading it"--Sheryl St. Germain.

Genres: Poetry

94 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2009

About the author

Rhett Iseman Trull’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Best New Poets 2008, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and other publications. Her awards include prizes from the Academy of American Poets and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation. She received her B.A. from Duke University and her M.F.A from University of North Carolina, Greensboro, where she was a Randall Jarrell fellow. She and her husband publish Cave Wall in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Her manuscript The Real Warnings was selected by contest judge Sheryl St. Germain as winner of the 2008 Anhinga Prize for Poetry.

Reviews

[Hannah VanderHart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rhett Iseman Trull writes such a deeply Southern, North Carolinian lyric, that touches on trauma, mental illness, and that landscape that all of us country kids know intimately and cannot shake. A tremendous book of poetry.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew poet Rhett Iseman Trull as an editor, first. I picked up a copy of her journal, Cave Wall, a year or so ago, and loved its contents. Then, somehow, I found out that she was a poet, too [insert sarcasm here -- I don't know why I'm always surprised to find out that editors are often writers, too!] So, I asked for her collection, The Real Warnings, winner of the 2008 Anhinga Prize for Poetry, for Christmas, and it has now officially become the first poetry book I have finished in 2011.

The Real Warnings is a collection that explores the bizarre, and often brutal, boundaries of love. Sometimes, Trull uses lyrics for this exploration. However, her narratives are my favorite. Sometimes her stories have autobiographical overtones; other times, figures from popular culture and fairy tales saunter in and out of her works. In one poem, "Introducing My Brother in the Role of Clark Kent" the narrator talks about her brother's love story with a woman who has "secrets/glinting in her eyes like kryptonite." In another poem, "There was a Moment on the Way Home When Hansel Left Gretel" a narrator takes on the voice of Gretel, asserting her strengh, explaining "I'm the one who has killed for us, who still hears/the witch's bones snapping in the fire."

In the middle of this collection, Trull includes a section titled "Rescuing Princess Zelda" that explores the lives of patients in a mental institution. In this part of the book, we are introduced to such characters as Josh, May and Casey. In one poem, patient Josh has a crush on a "girl from Duke who, to earn credit/for her abnormal psych class, visited/every week." In another poem, we learn about May "who struts around all day/in shirts ripped off at the midriff, who flings/her long flamingo legs over the side/of the rec room's single arm-chair and tells us/adventures of her life before."

Of course, I am going to recommend The Real Warning to any reader of contemporary poetry. But, I am also going to make a quick plug for Cave Wall, one of the best journals being published today.

[Roxanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book. Rhett is a compelling storyteller and her poems are lovely and heartbreaking and amazing.