The poems in Girl Torpedo address gendered injustice, and the ways in which violence against women is often condoned or ignored. Rife with sass and swagger, these poems are reclamation spells, war cries, elegies for girlhood stolen, and amulets for the unborn. They chart the delights and dreads of mother-love, and wrestle with the responsibility of living in both privilege & marginalization, especially in terms of negotiating power of the body. Invoking a sisterhood of survival with language rendered in velocity and volatility, Girl Torpedo wants to sink the old battleship and resurface whole.
GIRL TORPEDO
Advance praise for Girl Torpedo:
Girl Torpedo is one brave book–it's unafraid, unsentimental, brash but never stereotypically sassy–it's a book to hold on to, to navigate all the savage seas of living with its "seedy motels bound by bay and intercostal waterway." Emari DiGiorgio's sure steps and deft handling of this unstable mass of human life is so compelling that you'll want more than one copy of Girl Torpedo. Get one for yourself, to keep at your bedside table. Get one for your best friend, or for any "dangerous hum of a girl" you happen to know. DiGiorgio writes so beautifully that you'll want to hang on for the ride wherever her imagination takes her. She can even make a hammer sing! All hail Girl Torpedo!
~Allison Joseph
At the heart of Emari DiGiorgio’s brave and timely new book is a survivor’s question: Where does a girl torpedo strike/an old battleship?Undergirding the collection are wounds both personal and national: the loss of a child, betrayals and abuses at the hands of fathers and lovers, the shortcomings of our parents, wars waged internationally and ongoing injustices at home. How easy it would be to devolve into rage or despair, but these poems are guided by a resilient hope manifest in language precise as the sharpest blade. The opposite of wounded isn’t healed, the poet writes. But the journey, as in these fierce poems, can be both powerful and ennobling.
~Natasha Trethewey
What I love about this book is best said by the poet herself: “I’m alone in a maelstrom with one hand/on the rudder, one on my heart.” While the turmoil she guides us through is immense, so are her capacities -- for sense when available, for anger when necessary, for imagination when it needs to be let loose. A good poet always makes me think of Heisenberg, in that she changes what she sees. Clear eyed is not right: Emari Digiorgio is many eyed. If that sounds scary, good.
~Bob Hicok