Good god, Traci's language and her arresting images make this book one of the best I've read this semester! In the poems, a group of women are wandering through a post-apocalyptic landscape searching for salvation, and they find it among the ruins and carnage of their fallen civilization . Traci does an incredible job of stringing devastating images together to form a general feeling of insurmountable loss, and her carefully chosen abstractions, which usually hurt a poem, only added to their depth. It doesn't surprise me that Carolyn Forche wrote the forward to this book, because, at her best, Traci reminds me of Forche's Salvador poems in "The Country Between Us". Completely worth the read! If you crave for the conjunction of myth and poetry, then this a collection for you. New twists on modern myths come alive page after page. Christian, pagan new age, classical allusions - it is all here. And, still there the ever constant poetic themes of life, birth, death, dying, decaying, loving and sorrow. This is great, but I confess I got to read it over the course of a sleepy Friday at work. I went to Amazon to buy her earlier collection, and anticipate the next one.
What do You think about Our Lady Of The Ruins (2012)?
This brilliant collection requires depth to read but beautiful, well-crafted and creative.
—cellambson
Very cool, very grisly post-apocalyptic poetry. Highly recommended.
—calla172
