Review of Bone of My Bone by Nicole Rollender (Blood Pudding Press 2015)

In the title poem, Rollender uses imagery in a mystical, ritualistic way, paying homage to the women who made her. She calls back to "the old world" in which "piss prophets mixed / a woman's lemon urine with wine to discern what / was in the womb," and, later,

I put
the lines that grew on her skin into a bowl, muddy
my fingers in her waxiness and into her dead eye,
unraveling her, seaming her skin, blanching her
bones back to such a shine, like a giant star's last open
into brilliance.

In this devotion to memory, the body isn't sacred; it just provides ingredients for a potion that makes what's greater, that "last open into brilliance."

See more at: http://www.literarymama.com/reviews/archives/2015/10/mothering-the-unknown-a-poetry-roundup-review.html

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I didn't encounter this review until several months after it was published, but it focuses on several poetry chapbooks by women, including Bone of My Bone by Nicole Rollender, which was published by Blood Pudding Press.

Thank you to Literary Mama and Farah Marklevits for this review.

You can acquire your very own hand-bound copy of Bone of My Bone from the Blood Pudding Press shop here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/244912275/new-bone-of-my-bone-by-nicole-rollender?ref=shop_home_active_3