Little Beast is a collection of poems that remind us that brutality and beauty are often two sides of the same coin. Does love exist without savagery? What is the difference between motherhood and miracles? Wildlife, witchcraft, and wonder are found throughout these poems, and each pull the reader into the magic they hold. Weaving folklore with survival stories, this collection informs the reader when to fight back, when to run, and when to trust shelter when it's finally found.Sara Quinn Rivara's dazzling new collection Little Beast is the fire and the cauldron. These poems "unzip [their] woman's skin." In language at once precise and ferocious, these poems sizzle and writhe, and yet they rise, anew, clean of every abuse, every patriarchal gaslight that sparked their death, their rebirth. They are housewitches and snaked, smart, double-edged women-Eve and her progeny disavowing the gardens and wilding their own. Taut, tightwire, sharp, and utterly gorgeous, these poems mother themselves and a whole new generation of powerful girls and women with "a kind of hope that borders on the obscene." These little beasts unleash the feral spells within us all. - Jenn Givhan, author of "Belly to the Brutal"In the poem "Witch-wife," Sara Quinn Rivara writes, "This is a woman's story. You know how it ends." But we don't. Rivara deconstructs and reconstructs mythology, fairy tale, allegory, and history, turning each tale upon its head. In "At The Far Edge of Paradise," while "Adam named the animals, [. . . ] Eve swallowed their names like pomegranate seeds before she slipped into the underworld." I kept reading and rereading to untangle each poem, to learn what would happen next, to delight in each retelling, to follow the string through the labyrinth, which is really a tapestry of Rivara's making. I know I'll come back to this collection again and again. - Shaindel Beers, author of Secure Your Own Mask (Winner of the White Pine Poetry Prize, Finalist for the Oregon Book Award)

Little Beast

Literature & Fiction

Rivara, Sara Quinn

Poetry

Riot in Your Throat

Poetry. "'Not the drowned girl but the swimming one,' Rivara writes in ANIMAL BRIDE. These poems are written at the crossroads of womanhood: to be a woman in captivity or a woman breaking free. Like a 21st century Persephone, the woman at the heart of ANIMAL BRIDE journeys out of the underworld of a violent marriage to find strength in her animal self. Bride, wife, mother, lover--Rivara wrestles with many forms of being female, and summons the natural elements of fire and ice, air and water, to become a shapeshifter. I found myself reveling in the lyric energy of these lines, and how the voice grows brasher, more authoritative, more courageous. Poem after poem, there's a gathering strength and resilience. This is a powerful story of womanhood and transformation--between hell and hope, fear and freedom, silence and singing."--Ansel Elkins "'Listen: Living takes such courage,' confides Sara Quinn Rivara in ANIMAL BRIDE. These poems are relentless, shaped in fire and spoken as resurrection. They delve into the dark, the feral, the fierce transmutations needed to break from the cold waters of a disastrous marriage, to become, finally, oneself. Their motivation: a ferocious love for the speaker's son and, eventually, herself. Their mechanisms are myth and fairytale--Persephone's escape from Asphodel; a baby 'half wolf, half bird...mouth like an open wound.' And their language is a knife-edged liturgy--words risen blazing from the ruins, 'overcome with blood, with blossom.'"--Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet

Animal Bride

Tinderbox Editions

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Books by Rivara, Sara Quinn

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rivara, Sara Quinn. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Little Beast

Animal Bride