Theories of Falling
By Sandra Beasley

Winner of the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize
Marie Howe, Judge

“I kept coming back to these poems—the tough lyric voice that got under my skin. Clear, intent, this poet doesn’t want to fool herself or anybody else. Desire pushes defeat against the wall, and the spirit climbs up from underground.”

         ––Marie Howe, from the judge’s statement

“Sandra Beasley slices her way down the page with precision and punch. Her haunting ‘Allergy Girl’ series will set off such an itch, I doubt you’ll ever fully recover . . . This poet leaves us to smolder and ache in small kingdoms where ‘even the tame dogs dream of biting clear to the bone.’ Theories of Falling is a poetry debut rife with heartbeat, knocking headboards, and the most delicious thunder. Take cover.”

         ––Aimee Nezhukumatathil

“Sandra Beasley’s Theories of Falling has a vivacity and authority of imagination that constantly transforms her subject matter. Thus she can begin a poem called ‘The Story of My Family’ with ‘You’re a tooth I tongue and tongue, / tasting blood as you loosen, // testing the sweet root of the hole.’ Or announce, in another, that ‘sorrows burrowed in above the bone and bloomed.’ Despite their frequent sources in the darker regions of experience, these lyric tales are tonic rather than toxic and written with a jaunty audacity that is utterly winning.”

         ––Gregory Orr

“Some truths induce fevers; others offer fast relief. The unflinching, personal human truths in Sandra Beasley’s debut collection are worth the swallow for, not too long after, we awaken to both our healing and agitation. These stunning poems throb within our temples, as only a pure source of music can. Language—at this most dramatized and artful level—both delights and haunts us, right where it hurts.”

         ––Major Jackson

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
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