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Synopsis
‘Big-Eyed Afraid’ is a fast-paced, breathlessly witty and illuminating riff on the multiple effects of race, sex, biology and social pressure on who we are and how we see ourselves. Dawson’s dazzling rhymes, her perfect pitch for an array of idioms ranging from the smutty to the sacred, and her extraordinary combination of metrical control and jazz-like syntactical elaboration make her work feel at one and the same time chiselled and improvised, traditional and utterly distinct. Brilliantly alert to multiple influences yet irreducibly tied to this particular poet at this particular moment in our collective history, Big-Eyed Afraid is one of the most compelling and entertaining books of poetry I’ve read in I don’t know how long.’ – Alan Shapiro‘Erica Dawson is the most exciting younger poet I've seen in years. What drive and verve! Even in lines under tight control, she can sound reckless. Her dazzling wit informs poem after poem, making each seem like a stiff drink with a dash of bitters. ‘Big-Eyed Afraid’ is a sensational debut. I can't recall finding this much energy between two covers since Ariel. – X. J. KennedyErica Dawson was born in Columbia, Maryland in 1979. After earning her Master of Fine Arts from Ohio State University in 2006, she moved to the University of Cincinnati, where she is pursuing a PhD in English and Comparative Literature as the Elliston Fellow in Poetry. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Barrow Street, Blackbird, Sewanee Theological Review, Southwest Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review. She has been awarded several fellowships and prizes, including the Academy of American Poets Prize at Ohio State University. She also took second place in the 2004 Morton Marr Poetry Prize.
Dexterously rhythmic, with punchy rhymes and inventive style, Erica Dawson's poems allow her to sing a truly modern song of herself and persuade the reader to assume what she assumes with every perfectly placed note along the way. This book is a joy to read.
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