The Woman You Write Poems About (Civil Defense Pocketbook)

My stories / don t always sound so sweet, says Danielle Montgomery in one of the poems herein. She s right. Tales of fugitive relatives, destitute swindlers and dangerous families populate her work. Writing bad checks and using denuded credit cards, Montgomery shows us what happens when the second paycheck in paycheck-to-paycheck goes missing. She shows us the effects when basic needs are denied. And her poems insist on reminding us that this too, is America, not American literature and that the line drawn between us and them is a fiction, a lie we tell ourselves to keep ourselves safe. But none of us, as Montgomery s work shows us, can ever be truly safe as long as we are human. --Daphne Gottlieb, from the introduction In Danielle Montgomery s poetry, faith rides shotgun with hopelessness, and at the last minute grabs the wheel, dropping us off at our destination: salvation. --Thea Hillman