Explore our Books
Heritage & Other Pseudonyms
March 19, 2024
We consider Lorrie Ness to be one of the most talented living poets, and Heritage & Other Pseudonyms is a masterclass in unpretentiously unlocking the panoply of human emotions that readers secretly keep at arm’s-length when they engage with poetry. The experiences of transport and challenge that coalesce at the core of every supremely accessible poem in this stunning collection help us to better understand ourselves, and the world around us, in beautiful and unexpected ways. The sophisticated elegance and raw power of Lorrie’s craft surges through Heritage & Other Pseudonyms with a seamless sense of timelessness that somehow also feels vividly urgent — a kind of intangible magic that is always a pleasure to experience on the page.
— Jason Splichal, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Sky Island Journal
In her latest collection, Lorrie Ness paints an intricate, aching portrait of landscape and inheritance. Here, the wonders and cruelties of family and the natural world braid together, not quite healing but rather reshaping one another, the way an American elm crumbles so that “[e]very summer, woodpeckers / fledge from its core.” When home is both “a grave and a nebula,” Ness reminds us how to hold the stories of where we come from with exquisite and unwavering attention.
— Empty House Press
Available now from Amazon and soon from our Bookshop.org store.
