It Will Have Been So Beautiful
A Collection of Poems by Amanda Shaw
Now
Available
Where to Buy “It Will Have Been So Beautiful”
Amanda Shaw’s Debut Poetry Collection
Interested in a signed copy? Email me here. Or, support small presses by ordering from Lily Poetry Review Books here.
Other ways to purchase
YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE
About
With urgency and compassion, humor and wonder, Amanda Shaw’s debut poetry collection “It Will Have Been So Beautiful” examines the many dimensions of what it means to call anything “home,” including the earth as we know it. In a manner reminiscent of Eugène Atget, who wrote “will disappear” on his photographs of turn-of-the-century Paris, Shaw captures the unique melancholy of living in a time of unknowable change.
Shaw’s powerful poetry explores the line between love and loss, as she implores us to find a more profound commitment to life in all its forms. At times playful and ironic, the poems celebrate language’s sonic capacities, probing art’s potential to move us from mourning to joy.
It Will Have Been So Beautiful is now available from Lily Poetry Review Books. If you’d like a signed copy, please use the “Contact” form at the bottom of the page.
Details
TITLE: It Will Have Been So Beautiful
AUTHOR: Amanda Shaw
GENRE: Contemporary American Poetry
PUBLISHER: Lily Poetry Review Books
THEMES: Love, Loss, Childhood, Displacement, Human Experience, Climate Change
ISBN: 978-1-957755-35-9
Across waves I’ve traveled backward to now—to what remains of Rome, where weeks of November rains have brought the smell of mold instead of frost. Thick curtains leave their ancient must on the hands that draw them closed; I learn again that water can be hard: it whitens pans and yellows whites and heavies my head with unrinsed hair.
—from “Nothing but Water”
Reviews
Praise for “It Will Have Been So Beautiful”
It Will Have Been So Beautiful, Amanda Shaw’s wonderful debut, is as interested in language itself as what language can make. Energetic, deploying a rich vernacular and music, her collection sings, even, or perhaps especially, in the midst of the most challenge or difficulty. “This shouldn’t be beautiful,” she writes, but to the contrary, it is.
—Nathan McClain, Author of “Previously Owned”
The intelligence enlivening every line of every poem is rich, complex and startlingly vivid. Nuanced and disquieting, the political feeling behind these poems is counteracted by a close, heart-wrenching evocation of how what’s best about us is part and parcel of what’s worst. This is a beautiful and troubling book.
—Alan Shapiro, Author of “Life Pig”
It takes a special talent to write “big” poems—sprawling, associative, dotted with historic and cultural reference—that are simultaneously intimate, vulnerable, and funny. Amanda Shaw walks that tightrope, understanding “The world created / to comprehend itself / is weedy.” Yet It Will Have Been So Beautiful is also an embodiment of our shared desire to know and be known, and filled with stubborn joys.
—Sandra Beasley, Author of “Made to Explode: Poems”
Author
About the Author
Amanda Shaw, Contemporary American Poet
Poet Amanda Shaw is an accomplished author, educator, and editor. She is passionate about supporting emerging authors and contemporary poetry, and is currently the book review editor for Lily Poetry Review.
Amanda is available for poetry reading events, media interviews, book signings, and a wide range of freelance writing and editing services.
