Recidivism

Laura Minor

Your bullpen jumpsuit was bright orange                 on the morning I told the judge you were a good man.Months later, the terrible applause of pool balls                 rolled through me as I walked homeand the heft of summer anchored me                 from flinging myself into trees.                 The women on the street came in shapeslike the smooth bodies of guitars.Everyone wants someone to crawl back to;                 everyone wants to forgive the rose for dying.                 You used to make everyone jealous of my laughter,                                  turned every moment vignette, borderless and fading.

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Laura Minor won the 2020 John Ciardi Poetry Prize. Her critically acclaimed debut book of poems, Flowers As Mind Control, is on University of Arkansas Press. She was also a finalist for the 2019 National Poetry Series and the winner of the 2019 ILA’s Rita Dove Poetry Award. REad more at lauraminor.com

Kansas, Missouri

This book, which was selected by poet John Hodgen for the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, ranges across rural Florida and Georgia as well as Los Angeles and New York City, include considerations of homesickness, memory, music, alcohol, love, and loss. With a voice at once inquisitive and prescient, Minor meditates on consumption, vice, homesickness, memory, family, and the landscape. Minor’s writing is unerringly lyric and blooming with elegant charm and keen description. This book is an alchemy of fortitude in the face of despair and all the transformative possibility that comes with the hope for a better future.

“This is the magnificent story of ruining things, weeping bottles, flying tuna-fish sandwiches,” writes Minor in her panoramic debut that explores setting (mostly Florida), relationships with men and women, illness, friendship, depression, and suicidal ideation. Its dedication “to women everywhere who refuse to give up their dreams” signals the collection’s interest in resilience. Readers will enjoy Minor’s fierce, unabashed voice.”
Publishers Weekly

Flowers as Mind Control is a lyrically compelling collection of poetry written by Laura Minor, the winner of the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, selected by John Hodgen. Minor’s debut collection is a truly original compilation of loneliness and wanderlust with meditations ranging from music and alcohol to homesickness and loss.”
—Jessica Blandford, Southern Review of Books, March 2022

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