A Rough Deliverance: Collected Poems 1983-2013

by Nancy Bevilaqua

How the night parades. How wretched all
the milky stars a million years
erupting, the dry cicadas,
silent, sliding
among leaves, this glass
I said I wouldn't have. Here's to
a rough deliverance, the fire in the chest.

A collection of poems from the author of Holding Breath: A Memoir of AIDS' Wildfire Days, A Rough Deliverance begins with poems the author wrote as an ambitious and conflicted 22-year old college student just learning to navigate her life on her own, a young woman who wanted nothing more than to be a "famous poet", and attended NYU's graduate poetry program in order to try to do that.

It closes with poems written by a woman thirty years older--in some ways very different, in some ways very much the same, perhaps wiser and perhaps not. She is not a famous poet, but she is someone who has loved deeply, witnessed the ravages of an epidemic from the "front lines," grieved, traveled extensively, made terrible choices and perfect ones, over-indulged and abstained, raised a wonderful son, wrestled with anger and shame about the past and fear of what's to come, and finally learned to see all of it as absolutely worthwhile.

This is a collection of poems that documents a ragged, imperfect, and ultimately joyful life lived one deliverance at a time.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1493783181
• ISBN13: 9781493783182
• Release Date: November 2013
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 66 Pages
• Weight: 0.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.0" x 8.0"