Becoming Persephone

"These poems are fierce. Turbulent. Forceful. Astute. In Becoming Persephone, Mary Ann Honaker has put together a collection that tears at the fabric of those moments in our lives that become us, that render our lives, that remember us, sometimes when we don't want to remember them. There is darkness here, but not desperation. Love and anti-love. Pain, certainly, but also perception. The poems are wonderfully constructed and sharply stated, giving voice to things that drag us down to our personal hells, but also ultimately insightfully and intelligently facing them down. They develop into hymns of maturation, accepting that death is a rebirth, the underworld goddess holding the sheaf of new life, understanding a way of being that has become, like her Jazz Birds acknowledge, 'All right, all right, all right.'"--Kirk Judd, author of My People Was MusicMary Ann Honaker is the author of It Will Happen Like This (YesNo Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in 2 Bridges, Drunk Monkeys, Euphony, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Off the Coast, Van Gogh's Ear, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Mary Ann holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia, but considers Salem, Massachusetts, where she lived for many years, her second home.