What Happened Was:

Written in the wake of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony in the Supreme Court confirmation hearing and steeped in the memory of Anita Hill’s testimony thirty years ago, What Happened Was: explores the cumulative effect of what women have been told is not that bad. The title series of What Happened Was: includes ten poems; each uses seven repetitions of “what happened was” to tell its story. The chapbook begins with the poet’s mother, who was told by the law school dean that she could not attend classes while pregnant. Other poems elucidate the poet’s own experiences of mismatched assumptions and sexual harassment in college and in the workplace, in the context of history and in the present moment. What Happened Was: speaks up and speaks back, “still teeming with syllables left to spill.”\nFrom the Back Cover\npraise for What Happened Was:\nWhat Happened Was:is the work of a poet at the height of her powers. Its architecture has a delightful variety; we have both taut, imagistic poems that, say, consider the meaning of the word "meantime" or the middling middle finger, and we also have the "What Happened Was:" series that centers female disenfranchisement with sly surprise. This is a fabulous collection, confident and compelling. ~ Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs\nIn Anna Leahy's telling of "What Happened," we are made aware of the conflicts between possibilities and chance; the yin and yang of the terrorizing, of the sublime; the "thousand splendors across . . . shadowed stretches"; that "opposites attract . . . in a flash." You'll be aware that you've been holding your breath until there are no more pages to turn. ~ Lynne Thompson, author of Fretwork\nIn Anna Leahy's poignant chapbook, you see the speaker unspool the connective threads of messages and meanings into lyrical diadems. Each intricate facet illuminates a potential possibility, and yet the full knowledge that once the light shines through, piercing the edges of what is woven, the gaps are reflected, shimmering on the walls as a testament to the difficulty of this knowledge. But even further, Leahy speaks to the dangers of these misunderstandings. The poems in What Happened Was: reveal the finely hewn corners, sharpened to cutting. It is there where the poems contemplate power, silence, and the need to speak on history. ~ Oliver de la Paz, author of The Boy in the Labyrinth