Roseanna Alice Boswell

Poet | Feminist | Educator

"Every page of Roseanna Alice Boswell’s Hiding in a Thimble faces down the myriad feminist complications of domesticity—of the very existence of girls and women within an enclosed world where the body matters most when subordinated—with humor, poignancy, mischief, tenderness, charm, profundity—and always, always imagination. Why do we feel so normal riding stereotypes all the way to love and destruction? They sneak up on us even when we’re paying attention. As the title of one of the poems puts it, 'I didn’t mean to hate myself.' I love this book for offering me the bunny-foot good luck to hop over self-hatred and the doe eyes to see it coming."

 

- Lisa Lewis, author of Taxonomy of the Missing

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"Hiding in a Thimble is a world unto itself, one where the fantastic and the domestic curl themselves together next to a soft fire. In these poems, fabulist fairy tales live alongside NSYNC and Honey Boo Boo and they're all digitally/permanently preserved on social media. “If I were Medusa/” Boswell writes, “I’d let my snakes drink bleach/ and become platinum editions/ of themselves.” This ferocity fuels these poems as the speakers pose questions about their bodies, their marriages, their sexuality, and about all of the narratives on which girls and women are raised. Gorgeously wrought, precisely metaphored, and simultaneously sad and funny, each poem in this collection is a masterclass in the contemporary moment. If Sylvia Plath had been a millennial, she’d be Roseanna Alice Boswell. And we are lucky to have her and her poems."

 

- Anthony Frame, author of Where Wind Meets Wing

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"It’s dark in the forest, but gleaming pairs of eyes are peering out, and then they begin to sing: here’s Doe Eyes and Bunny and Mable Bushytail, the chorus of creatures that populates Roseanna Alice Boswell’s enchanting debut, Hiding in a Thimble. In these sly fables, a young woman performs the postures and traps of femininity with an ironic flourish (or is that sincere dedication?), taking as her model “anything / that has to filter potential catastrophe / for a living.” But don’t be fooled by all the tea serving, dishwashing, lunch prep, and other acts of kitchen magic: at their heart, these poems revel in animality. Like the mammal she knows she is, our speaker may be warm and cuddly, but she’s also possessed of sharp teeth and boiling blood. What’s hiding in a thimble is no less than big-bang energy: what might split open “if,” as Muriel Rukeyser asked, “one woman told the truth about her life?” Go for a romp (in the woods, between the sheets, between the lines) with Boswell’s poems and find out.”

 

- Becca Klaver, author of Ready for the World

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