CUT WOMAN

CUT WOMAN

 

did i give you // a forever // i could not promise?

… an altered kind of grief?

— 2020 Harvard Bookstore Staff Pick —

“One of the things I love most is when a poetry book forces me to slow down, to linger in every pause between breaths and reckon with the awareness that Reading is, itself, an act of consumption. Cut Woman does just this. From “night // fall” to “day//break,” Igusti’s speaker forces readers to linger in the spaces both within and between words, bodies, and countries, even when those spaces do not yet exist: “altar of my body did i give you // a forever // i could not promise? // …// an altered kind of grief?” These poems slice, piece, project only to gut open. These poems remember despite Memory: “i purposely forget // the prayer for when someone dies // inna-illahi-something // i always remember how to start // grieving // but // never when or how to let it out of my mouth.” Dena Igusti is a poet of undying urgency – this is a bold, heart-shattering chapbook debut.” 

—George Abraham, author of Birthright (Button Poetry)

“Speechless. Euphoric. Cathartic. Cut Woman is a vibrant prayer for our living and a loving salve for our ghosts. With a deft, devoted hand, Dena Igusti weaves alienation, grief, desire, and defiance into an indelible tapestry of survival and celebration. They show us that mortality is not a deadline but a continuum. We will die, but we will also cry, and shout, and love, and dance, and live on. Sunset is just the beginning, and Igusti will guide us into the next morning.”
—Teta Alim, D.C.-based journalist and founder of Buah Zine

“Igusti’s work asks what is the metaphysical conceit of the cut? from whom or what are we cut? what are the rules of being cut & the life after? when they cut they cut the american light with their brown flicker, they incise the language, they puncture a privilege, & they work with inherited blood. This is a play of radical vulnerability around the self, a play of no games.”
—Trace DePass, author of Self Portrait As the Space Between Us (PANK)

REVIEWS

“Dena Igusti guides us on a journey of mourning and reclamation across time and continents.”
–Kaleigh O’Keefe, Harvard Bookstore

“This collection weaves together the lasting effects of inheritance and familial trauma, as one generation informs the next”
–Hannah Soyer, Sundress Publications

“CUT WOMAN is a confession, a book that speaks so closely in the ear of the reader—listen well”
–Summer Farah, Vagabond City Lit

Now available at:

Game Over Books
Small Press Distribution
Amazon
Harvard Book Store
Skylight Books

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