Given reviewed in Adroit

We love this generous and insightful review of Liza Katz Duncan’s debut poetry collection, Given, in the Adroit Journal. Reviewer Kathy Nelson notes:

“What if my body is not an apocalypse?” writes Liza Katz Duncan in her poetry collection, Given (Autumn House Press, 2023), winner of the 2022 Autumn House Rising Writer Prize. The book is poised at the boundary between eco-poetics and the poetry of personal tragedy. Duncan explores the trauma of environmental cataclysm not simply as context but as metaphor for devastating personal loss through precise images and shattering restraint.

The overarching tone of the collection is grief; beginning in the  first section, which depicts a seaside ecology succumbing to industrial pollution and unrelenting hurricanes, through to the second section, where the loss of a child is revealed as the broken heart of this watery disaster, and into the stunning third section, expressed as a long epistolary lament.

To read the full review, check out Adroit‘s website here.