For My Father - Amira Thoron

'This book is a requiem. It is also a house. Each room is elegant and spare but with a feral grief coming in at every opening. For My Father, by Amira Thoron, is the debut of a poet with both exquisite technical skill and acute emotional perception The speaker of these poems directly addresses the father who vanished and her yearning for him. She reckons with the legacy of a beloved and distant grandmother whose affection was felt in the order she established and whose own grief and rage could only be expressed after she was dead. She also acknowledges the death we each carry within ourselves. She asks the only question that matters in the wake of death, where we are young forever in our loss - 'did you ever love me?' This book is in many ways about the wilderness that can't be avoided with our human efforts at ordering. Thoron accepts the artist's responsibility - to find the technique and courage to speak, even in the depths of savage grief.' - Laura Cronk