“Moving and mysterious, the poems in Ford’s first collection possess the veiled brilliance of stained glass windows seen at night.”—The New York Times Book Review
Body
This comes out of folklore. Invented because tenderness at times must be written in. There was a woman. There was a cross. But in fact they have hung him too high to be touched. —from "A Woman Wipes the Face of Jesus"
Poet Katie Ford's debut collection confronts God in a language as shifting and ecstatic as divine encounter
About the Author
Credit: Helge Brekke
Katie Ford is the author of If You Have to Go and three previous poetry collections: Blood Lyrics, named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Colosseum, recognized as a “Best Book of the Year” by Publishers Weekly and the Virginia Quarterly Review; and Deposition. The recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship and the Larry Levis Reading Prize, she teaches at the University of California, Riverside.