Bücher von Amanda J Bradley

Queen Kong opens with an autobiographical poem chronicling childhood through graduation from college. This not only informs the reader but also clearly infuses subtle meaning throughout the remainder of the book's poems, which are all lyric in nature. It is this subtlety that poignantly pervades the crown section of the book: a collection of hard-hitting feminist poems that Bradley wrote in dialogue with famous feminists across history. Queen Kong takes the reader by storm, just like her male counterpart took New York, except Queen Kong is a powerful journey for women (and men) everywhere.

Amanda J. Bradley's debut book of poems takes the reader on an inward journey from a place of disturbance to a recovered equilibrium. These poems probe intense scenarios and emotional states then step back to inquire what sense can be made of them. Delving for a purpose becomes a purpose in itself and ultimately reaffirms a life well examined."Hopping, skipping and dancing through the labyrinth of love and despair, Bradley creates a fresh figure of triumph through her sensitive, far-reaching poems. The language is both affectionate and stark, gentle and bitter, but always sharp, always poignant. A born observer, by an appealing dry irony she deftly detaches even her 'confessional' work from herself, so that the body in the poems comes out larger than the one behind them. As she brightly says in one of her finest pieces, inaudibly asking, what do we really see when we look? 'So much is altered by revisions,/By tricks of thought, by our inadequacy,//By appearances...' Here's a poet excellently (and ironically) giving us what, in the closing lines of this book she says we can't have-namely, the sense of what matters."-F. D. Reeve"Amanda Bradley's poetry is a tense, taut, and deeply personal work that takes the reader on a Dantesque exploration of the heaven and hell of daily experience, or, as the book partitions them, Disturbance and Equilibrium. From the daily observations in the superficially prosaic lives in 'Apartment Building 3:00 AM,' where 'the dishes were done by hand/with detergent containing aloe' through the agony of 'now that I fear this fight will never end, anesthetize me' in her poem, 'Ambivalence,' Bradley coolly dissects grief, anguish, and suffering, then doles out an uncompromising medicine of emotional truth teaspoonful by luminous teaspoonful."-Fred Yannantuono

OZ AT NIGHT lives up to its title: it is dark and fantastical, frightening and playful. A courageous looking is at the center of Bradley's poetic project, and in this her second book of poems, her gaze never falters. OZ AT NIGHT tackles philosophical musings and personal insights with equal passion, yet its interlude section contains lightly comedic poems. Its poetic forms cover as much ground as its topics, incorporating everything from short-lined free verse to strict and loose sonnets, a prose poem, an acrostic, haiku. Through the variety of OZ AT NIGHT run a consistent sincerity and an unwavering desire to understand.