The Daughter's Curse

The Daughter's Curse hunts at the beauty and horror between demons at mama's bedposts and the moment she allows her children to be carried back to bed, or the liminal space between mothers sharp as knives and the psych ward of the nearest hospital, like that between mother and daughter. In these lyrical poems, Jenn Givhan's figurative daughter is both fierce and cautious. ~Stephanie Bryant Anderson This book, like a warning. This critique and celebration demands to be seen; demands we too learn how there is no happily ever after, that a beloved desert may possess dangers but it also holds beauty close, if we look where Jenn Givhan looks. ~Stacey Balkun Is it better to be hunter or hunted, gutter or gutted? That is the quandary around which poems stalk and retreat in Jenn Givhan's most recent collection, The Daughter's Curse. ~Brenda Mann Hammack