Terrible Blooms

"Stein reminds us that there is no honey―rough, or otherwise―without the sting." ―The New York Times
In this lush, disturbing second collection from APR/Honickman Prize winner Melissa Stein, exquisite images are salvaged from harm and survival. Set against the natural world's violence―both ordinary and sublime―pain shines jewel-like out of these poems, illuminating what lovers and families conceal. Stein uses her gifts for persona and lyric richness to build worlds that are vivid, intricate, tough, sexy, and raw: "over and over // life slapping you in the face / till you're newly burnished / flat-out gasping and awake." Breathless with risk and redemption, Terrible blooms shows how loss claims us and what we reclaim.

"Stein's poems are lit by a restless and flashing verbal intelligence...a nearly invisible, effortless authority." ―Mark Doty

"Rough Honey is a miracle of a first collection...Stein is a new poet of the first order." ―Molly Peacock

From "How I":
Stupidly. Like a dog,
like drought
flood, like a vole
the hawk lifts screaming
to its first and last
panoramic.
Each want sired
want and I
was drowning in it―

Melissa Stein's debut collection Rough Honey won the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. She is a freelance editor in San Francisco.