EastOver Press is proud to announce the publication of a collection of poems, Midwestern Poet’s Incomplete Guide to Symbolism, by Erica Anderson-Senter.
Midwestern Poet’s Incomplete Guide to Symbolism reads like a map through a Midwestern landscape of love, heartache, and enduring grief. Equal parts visual dictionary, cryptogram, and Rosetta Stone, these poems identify the world’s constantly shifting meaning. A deer is not just a deer. A horse is not only a horse. A drop of blood has wide-ranging implications. In language that is both plain-spoken and image-driven, these poems capture the body in all its beauty and pain, as well as the heart in its immortal ebb and flow. From the loss of a father to the agony of miscarriage, from the dissolution of a marriage to the complexities of adult love, Anderson-Senter covers impossible ground in this memorable, courageous collection.
Sarah Sandman, author of I Speak Moan and The Sinew of 47 Years, said of the collection, “The lines in this book are vespers, a prayer to the broken hearted. We are swept up in the beauty of form, the spaces in between, the images of a red-tail hawk, and a cantering horse. The book masterfully hones the sounds of grief, guttural and raw, flowing through a body, a mouth, a soul.”
Mark Wunderlich, author of God of Nothingness and The Earth Avails, said, “Out of grief, out of longing, out of her ravishing gift for noticing, comes this numinous and memorable debut by Erica Anderson-Senter, whose sensibility has been born out of her gifts for surviving…I adore the rough music of this book, its candid appraisals, and this poet’s fearless descriptions of the sources of fear, sadness, love, life.”
Emily Mohn-Slate, author of The Falls, said, “Erica Anderson-Senter’s candid, sensual voice invites us through fields of grief, loss, desire, and myth. Why couldn’t we have loved harder in this universe, / more robustly? the speaker asks…These poems root us deep in Midwestern landscapes as we encounter litanies, psalms, and a lush, unsentimental tenderness that sings out that swift, / startling joy in the same breath as gutting loss. This is an extraordinary, courageous debut collection.”
Anderson-Senter lives and writes in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She teaches high school English and creative writing. Her work has appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, the once CrabFat Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, Off the Coast, and Dialogist, among others. Her chapbook, seven days now, was published by The Dandelion Review. Erica hosts free literary events throughout her city to bring poetry to the public. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing through the Writing Seminars at Bennington College in Vermont. Midwestern Poet’s Incomplete Guide to Symbolism is Anderson-Senter’s debut full-length collection.
Midwestern Poet’s Incomplete Guide to Symbolism
Erica Anderson-Senter ▪ Released October 26, 2021
Available now on: Bookshop.org ▪ Barnes & Noble ▪ Amazon
ISBN-13: 978-1-958094-13-6