Tongue

In this haunting, intense, and lyrical new collection of poems by Rachel Contreni Flynn, we meet two sisters growing up in farmland America until they are separated by the older girl’s illness. The younger girl travels to the Maine coast where the radio reports “the discovery of a human tongue on the beach.” Tongue is a story as harrowing and magical as any Old World fairy tale, told in a voice that is at once frank and gentle. Flynn has crafted a book full of “wilderness, mystery, magic,” as her poems confront time and again the myths and memories of childhood and ask us to name what nourishes, changes, sustains, and saves us. Sensuous, inventive and startling images cohere into narrative: here, anger is a piano, God is a Matchbox car, loyalty is a wild pig. At its essence, Tongue is about the unending complexity and sheer stubbornness of love: “so difficult, so generous, so fabulous.”