Ladies' Abecedary

From the Back Cover\nLike a deck of playing cards, shuffled, fanned, dealt and swept away with a flourish, Arden Levine's Ladies' Abecedary delights and dazzles. In this alphabetic parade, portraits of women's lives flash past our eyes. Designated by only a letter and the "glittering shrapnel" and "high-heeled balancing acts" of Levine's descriptions, we can't be certain who or where or when these women live. Yet each life, each poem, feels vivid and energetic, bristling in forms that range from pantoums to prose poems. So we lean in closer to the mystery, keen to catch a fuller glimpse of each sharp life and not to miss the "twisting silver" sleight-of-hand taking place on the page. —Kirun Kapur, author of Women in the Waiting Room, finalist for the National Poetry Series\nThe poems in Ladies' Abecedary are self-aware "like warring starlings" and serve as a prayer to the imagination and craft. The female voices in these poems, ranging from cooks to scientists, push against stereotypes by exposing women's "voices between walls." They acknowledge the pursuit of safety, what women say to each other in secret, and how words help build identity. These women are more than just ladies. While Levine commits to the abecedary form, she is never a slave to it. Each poem has a volta, unexpected turns, deadpan humor, and windchimes. This collection belongs on your shelf. —Cynthia Manick, author of Blue Hallelujiahs and founder/curator of Soul Sister Revue\nArden Levine's extraordinary collection grapples with the questions of how women's stories are documented. In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf writes, "Who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body?" Ladies Abecedary is an audacious, feminist response to Woolf's question. Levine's readers measure the heat and violence done to the speakers of these stunning poems. While it is tempting to decipher which historical, popular culture, and literary figures feature in these captivating poems, the power of these poems accrues over the collection and exemplifies the diverse and complex nature of women's interior and external lives. In the beginning of the collection, Levine writes, "B, little she, was told she could be whoever she wished/in the school pageant. So she chose God." Near the end of the chapbook, Levine writes, "They've all forgotten her name." Levine makes sure that even if we don't know the names of each speaker, we know their stories. The collection exemplifies the importance of the project to reclaim voice, agency, and equality for women, in all their varied experiences, through history and in our current moment. —Jennifer Franklin, author of No Small Gift\nAn abecedary, or alphabet book, teaches letters, the primary pieces of language and of story-making. In Ladies’ Abecedary, each letter is a woman, each woman is a poem, and each poem is a narrative of female identity. These micro-biographies-in-verse present a series of anonymous characters (historical and mythological, contemporary and composite, unique and universal) in a collection that reveals "the diverse and complex nature of women’s interior and external lives.” Letter by letter, Ladies’ Abecedary “exemplifies the importance of the project to reclaim voice, agency, and equality for women,” and raises a remark about how a woman’s story is told.