Home, now, our walls
are thin. Neighbors all down the long halls
can hear I’m playing this song
again and again. That love calls me
and I have no place to hide.
—from “Ensconced”
It Will Have Been So Beautiful
Sonically rich, Shaw’s poems celebrate language’s capacities and probe its potential to move us from mourning to joy and a more profound commitment to life in all its forms.
“It Will Have Been So Beautiful, Amanda Shaw’s wonderful debut, is as interested in language itself as what language can make. “This shouldn’t be beautiful,” she writes, but to the contrary, it is.”
Nathan McClain, Author of Previously Owned
Up there amid the midges and wild carrot Greg told me about the layers of time I couldn't see, the remnants of fervent lava streams beneath the green furrows and uneven strips of rock. Midges? Black flies? Gnats? Whatever the tongue called them, they sought our hollows, entered nose and mouth.
—from “These Mountains (II)”
Writer Amanda Shaw has loved language and literature since childhood. She is an accomplished author and educator. Currently, Amanda serves as the book review editor for Lily Poetry Review, where she actively supports emerging authors.
Her debut collection, It Will Have Been So Beautiful, was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in March 2024.
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THOUGHTS ON “LAUNCHING” I opened my email this morning to a notification from UPS: “Hi, Amanda! Your package is arriving today.” I couldn’t remember ordering anything, so I used my […]
THE EXCITEMENT AND ANGST OF PERFORMING MY POEMS NOTE This post was originally published in the Washington Independent Review of Books on May 27, 2024. I also decided to put […]
BEHIND THE SCENES OF BOOK PROMOTION By Greg Sauter Amanda’S NOTES Apparently, when you have a book out, you need to write about it all the time. This is a […]