Hands-On Saints, by Holly Iglesias, is the fourth in Quale Press’s edition key satch(el) quarterly series of chapbooks of prose poetry. The twenty-three prose poems of Hands-On Saints create a revisionist hagiography. A chalice crafted of lesser metals, a taste of redemption in an unlikely mixture of sacred and profane. Saints outside the canon, unbeatified and bruised, coarse and clueless, deserving of heaven for their very flaws; as well as authorized saints, who offer dubious rewards at a terrible cost. An occasion of grace manifest in sacraments of rupture and awe.

Hands-On Saints

Literature & Fiction

Iglesias, Holly

Poetry

Quale Press

Iglesias examines critical studies on prose poetry in light of how they treat women writers. She contends that the form has been too narrowly defined and the work of many women prose poets has been neglected.

Boxing Inside the Box: Women's Prose Poetry

History & Criticism

Poetry. "This moving mosaic of the 1904 World's Fair carries the poignancy of an old family album, a presence at once here and gone. Through the poet's pitch-perfect ear and keen eye for the voices, vantages and scraps of the actual, come souvenirs of real lives transfixed in the glare of a triumphant technology's artificial light."—Eleanor Wilner First Book Award Winner 2008, selected by Harryette Mullen

Souvenirs of a Shrunken World (Kore Press First Book Award for Poetry)

Kore Press

"It's unusual to call a book of poetry a 'page turner,' but this collection, with the knocking and jostling of words that mark the peculiar rhythm and appeal of the prose poem, is just that. Iglesias has an uncanny ability to capture whole sweeps of history in a few lines, while her eye and ear for the quotidian result in the characters pulling us from one remarkable incident to another as if they had physically taken us by the elbow, whispering urgently."—Marie HarrisHolly Iglesias is the author of Souvenirs of a Shrunken World and a critical work, Boxing Inside the Box: Women's Prose Poetry.

Angles of Approach (Marie Alexander Poetry Series, 14)

White Pine Press

Sleeping Things is luminous, marvelously succinct, and always engaging. Iglesias renders the spectacle of growing up not with reflexive, all-too-easy nostalgia but with clear-eyed affection, meticulous precision and gusto, giving day-to-day incidents and reclaimed details of that hopeful, rambunctious Cold War era a sense of delightful enterprise and luster. This new book is a refreshingly artful, savvy meditation on the past, rife with compassion and humor, one to celebrate, savor, and enjoy! — Cyrus Cassells

Sleeping Things

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