Cat Lady: A Journey in American Sentences
CAT LADY: A JOURNEY IN AMERICAN SENTENCES
by Sarah Josephine Pennington
* 3rd Place, 2024 International 3-Day Poetry Chapbook Contest
Sarah
Josephine Pennington's Cat Lady: A
Journey in American Sentences is both first aid kit and survival guide for
the wounded body and soul. Using the American Sentence, a poetic form invented
by Allen Ginsberg, Pennington gazes unflinchingly into "Pain's terrors,
her depths, her / intricacies, her ways." Spare on the page, each line is
surgical, dissecting what it means to be caregiver and patient, to become whole
and wholly lost. What Pennington accomplishes in this poetic fist of a book is
remarkable: she transforms suffering into beauty, grief into comfort.