It Will Have Been So Beautiful - Amanda Shaw

 

ABOUT THE BOOK -

With urgency and compassion, humor and wonder, Amanda Shaw’s It Will Have Been So Beautiful examines the many dimensions of what it means to call anything “home,” including the earth as we know it. In a manner reminiscent of Eugène Atget, who wrote “will disappear” on his photographs of turn-of-the-century Paris, Shaw captures the unique melancholy of living in a time of unknowable change.

As she explores the line between love and loss, Shaw implores us to find a more profound commitment to life in all its forms. At times playful and ironic, the poems celebrate language’s sonic capacities, probing art’s potential to move us from mourning to joy.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR/POET -

From the time she learned to read her first word — “Boom!” — Amanda Shaw has been in love with literature and language. She earned a BA in English from Smith College and has advanced degrees in education and writing. Equally at ease in a high school classroom and a World Bank boardroom, she is an expert teacher who continues to share her belief in the power of words with students of all ages.

Amanda began her career at a public high school in Brooklyn, where she was committed to student-centered curriculum and staff development as part of NYC’s small schools movement. After nine years in the city, she moved on to teaching ESL internationally and domestically, first in Rome and now in Washington DC. Witnessing poetry’s unique impact on students’ intellectual and emotional development galvanized her own writing. In 2020, she received her MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers.

In addition to actively participating in local and online writing communities, Amanda is the book review editor for Lily Poetry Review Books, where she supports emerging writers. Lily Poetry Review Books will publish her debut collection, It Will Have Been So Beautiful, in March 2024. The poems, written over 15 years, explore love and loss in personal and global contexts. For the past four years, Amanda has divided her time between New Hampshire, where she was born, and Washington, DC. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

MY THOUGHTS -

Beautiful, thought provoking, and full of wonderful vivid descriptions. 

These poems are about loss, divorce, death, pets, they brought up memories for me… How could they be memories when they were written by someone else, and yet, they did.

Some of them just so powerful…

All of them - beautiful, and hit a nerve.

Bits and pieces of a couple ~

I want nothing more than to love that way,
Without shade— a naked beach in a storm,

A ledge of resonant sea—
Not splintered knees or crooked floors
Or a girl fixed to her father’s legs

As he tried to kick her away—
Not that, her cheek against the cold
Linoleum, the careless fluorescence

Of his gaze. The soft glow, the carpeted fall.
This song. This song. I want back that girl
With nothing more than to love.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My brother who though a gentle boy
Terrorized the kitten we got as consolation
After the divorce

Picking her up again and again
Until she had four days
And I was furious.

He kept saying that he was trying not to
But couldn’t help it
And I knew it,

He had a little too much love in him
And the count of who he had to give it to
Was down;

I voluntarily posted this review after receiving a copy of this from Poetic Book Tours. Thank you!