forget me hit me let me drink great quantities of clear, evil... by Katie Schmid

“safety can be found in a name, gleaned from the seeming order of definition (whether from a dictionary or medical pamphlet) even when faced with the treachery of meaning. The framework, the aesthetics, are evident, but as is true with the best expressive writing in any genre, the aesthetics disappear behind the profound experience of the text.”- Bill Scalia, Galatea Resurrects “Erin Bertram’s book demonstrates a poet at high power making use of language, form, and the material of the text to render experience in three registers-physical, psychological, metaphysical-in the manner of lived human experience. Named a “Recent and Recommended Book” by Valparaiso Poetry Review

THE URGE TO BELIEVE IS STRONGER THAN BELIEF ITSELF (Cherry Pie Press, 2008) Bertram asks us to trace our hands over the everyday and see it anew, so that we may marvel at it: ‘To light one another from within & stare dumbstruck at the glow.’ This collection, contemplative and shot through with longing, is a bright burning thing reminding us of the tenuousness and beauty inherent to intimacy.”-Katie Schmid, author of forget me / hit me / let me drink great quantities of clear, evil liquor “That oft-traversed and never-understood terrain of the beloved, of desire. The language of the poems, like the lovers who inhabit them, is ‘swashbuckling & radiant’ and leads us through, and beyond, ‘the lonesome country of the self.’”-Grace Bauer, author of The Women At The Well and Mean/Time

“The poems in Relief Map explore the dynamic landscape of abiding love-that territory that is ‘forever unchartered’ and yet ‘familiar as your own face and hands.’ Bertram locates the spirit in the body and the body, the human animal, in the natural world. Named a “New in September” Book by Lambda Literary

Forget me hit me let me drink great quantities of clear, evil... by Katie Schmid