In this manuscript, Kailey Giordano traces desire and trauma through the aftermath of domestic violence, inhabiting the quiet, untranslatable aloneness that lingers in its wake. Persephone, Iphigenia, Andromache, and the vixen move through the pages, carrying old stories into new wounds, exploring how grief, an unravelling self, and longing persist even in abusive, life-threatening relationships, and asking whether these can coexist with motherhood or life in the world. In these poems, Giordano tries to gather what has been shattered into something whole enough to hold, using myth and art to witness suffering and to carve beauty from what cannot be fully healed.
Advance Praise for Waiting in the Stone:
Jeffrey Levine, Publisher & Artistic Director of Tupelo Press: Waiting in the Stone undertakes a patient lyric excavation of desire, myth, and survival. Drawing on figures from classical mythology-Penelope, Andromache, Persephone-Kailey Giordano reenters inherited narratives of love and violence with a voice that is intimate, attentive, and unsparing: "There are ways of weathering a man." Moving between eros and aftermath, between devotion and damage, these poems resist both sentimentality and spectacle. Again and again, through memorable phrase-making-"Some nights never stop leaving"-Giordano sifts what may still speak from the emotional residue. What emerges is a book keenly alert to how bodies remember, how power shapes intimacy, and how lyric speech, practiced with steadiness and care, can bear witness. Waiting in the Stone is the work of a poet willing to keep faith with what endures-and to name what, in its own time, must be released.
Kristina Marie Darling, Editor-in-Chief of Tupelo Press and Tupelo Quarterly: Kailey Giordano's Waiting in the Stone is an extraordinary achievement. Throughout this lyrical and evocative collection, Giordano displays a truly virtuosic command of postmodern literary forms. But to say that Giordano is merely able to transition effortlessly between lyric fragments and triptychs, poem sequences, and fieldnotes would be to underestimate her powers as a writer. She is a gifted storyteller who places stylistic innovation in service of emotional resilience, ultimately creating a powerful experience for the reader. Bravissima!