I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Remember That You Are the Sun

Poetry. Women's Studies. In powerful, invigorating verse, Erin Slaughter relates the struggle of finding oneself in the modern day. In the span of a year, she falls deeply in love for the first time; establishes a strong, close-knit group of friends; loses both; and slowly learns to deal with that loss and the depression that comes with it. Slaughter's poetry comes alive with passion, fury, and hope in a world that often tears us down.

"This book is grimoire, is grain silo, is Americana and marginalia, is a hotel room across state lines. Slaughter gleans and gathers up deliciousness: ashes and gin, winged liner, bleach, blackberry throb, tootsie rolls, dirty martinis, cheese shards and a deer carcass, a store-bought orchid, a peeled ankle. Soak yourself in this work, its every sensation--like flesh falling off the rib, vicious and bittersweet. I WILL TELL THIS STORY TO THE SUN UNTIL YOU REMEMBER YOU ARE THE SUN is not to be missed--o 'horrible brightness,' o 'lovelaced void,' a 'radiating dark' that will have you hollering yes. Oh hell yes."--Emily Corwin

"'Forgiveness, your mouth / is the wet hungering mouth of the world / & its hungering for itself,' writes Erin Slaughter in her collection I WILL TELL THIS STORY TO THE SUN UNTIL YOU REMEMBER YOU ARE THE SUN. The speaker here is the 'actor in [her] own quiet being,' and in her full-bodied inhabitation of difficult inheritances, fraught beauties, and inevitable losses. These are poems of praise and consolation, of gratitude and grief; they reach toward hope even as they note the kindnesses we offer to the 'small, cruel moments [that] will ruin us.' Slaughter's poems brim with musicality and keen vision. They linger in a moment when we are not quite enough for one another and when we are all each other has."--Paula Cisewski