Other Maidens by Toti O'Brien

In Other Maidens, Toti O’Brien masterfully choreographs shifting perceptions of self and the other in a soulful dance with reality. These intuitive, courageous poems explore the elusive and illusive core of grief and wonder, fear and joy, estrangement and intimacy. Cadences of myth harbor tidal emotion; they seek identity, reflect on our relationships with mirrors and animals, our sexuality, and our gods. In these poems, we can feel the undulating vertebrae of our struggles, hear the wingbeats of unspoken or mysterious desire, speak with forgotten wounds and shadows, seek the depths of forgiveness, and break the surface of our shared earth, encountering a lost Eden that welcomes us every spring.

—William O’Daly, author of Yarrow and Smoke and translator of Book of Twilight, by Pablo Neruda

It’s not easy for poems to speak to both displacement and belonging but Other Maidens does. These works draw on the nexus of family and culture, weaving myth amongst its truths and truths into the lyric stories of its author. Its theme often suggests, rather than points to the voice in these poems moving away from experiential narrative to the borderland of dreams in the dense surface/tensed like the skin of a snake/throbbing/like the heart of an animal/prehistoric and blind. Philosophical, fierce, sensual and resolutely planted in the world of creation, Other Maidens creates a profound dialogue between poet and reader of a life well lived and a strong spirit where Dancers hold their bodies like candles/like altars on the land of terra incognita, and life is rarely firmly underfoot but something other, and can never be stable by its very nature.

—Lois P. Jones, author of Night Ladder

Toti O’Brien is the Italian accordionist with the Irish last name. She was born in Rome and she lives in Los Angeles, where she works as a self-employed artist, performing musician and professional dancer. Her writing has recently appeared in New Reader Magazine, Bindweed, Duende, and World Literature Today.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 146 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-374-4