Out from the Pleiades

A lyrical exploration of how a bully comes into being.

"'Why didn't I get a Barbie Dreamhouse for Christmas?' So asks Mina immediately after wondering if she's a racist because she's white too. Priorities, place and position move our hero from well-meaning child to disconcerted bully, borne by a fear of impotence in the world as she tests her own privileged, small power over others. Out From the Pleiades is a rich romp, chockfull of feel-good details and enough unanswered questions to make anyone secure in their moral center come, a tiny bit, undone. Ride in Mina's 'yolk-colored Subaru' as she toes the surfaces of high school, passing through the stoic suicide of 'Ginger, ' until our war protestor comes full circle to the uncharted depths of 'Yes' in soldier Violet's golden eyes - and discovers the harsher power of love's undoing."

-Amy King, poet, "I Want to Make You Safe" and "Slaves To Do These Things"

"Leslie McGrath's "Out from the Pleiades" is a hybrid gem, a novella in verse that works utterly both as lyric poetry and as story. The life of protagonist Mina Kali, born to the Seven Sisters - a commune of "radical warrior women"--unfolds with an epic sweep, from the moment Mina 'raged forth from the dark red dark' to her final love and loss. "Out from the Pleiades" is a rollicking, raucous, new myth, a classic with its head in Aristophanes and its satiric heart in the 1960s. You will read these poems aloud, laughing, and then find them sneakily haunting you."

-Susanne Paola Antonetta, poet "The Lives of the Saints," and author of "Make Me a Mother: a memoir"

""Out from the Pleiades" is a revealing character study, the story of "Mina," a bully bred from the excesses of liberal culture. It's a testament to the book's complex vision that we both condemn and ultimately empathize with Mina as she makes her way through the world. It's a master class in the psychology of intimidation, marked by McGrath's signature wit, compassion and insight." -Bruce Snider, poet, "Paradise, Indiana" and "The Year We Studied Women"