Fierce Geometry

Unquenchable longings pulsate through Brancaccio's version of a book of the dead. A recurring character-voice the poet trusts as "ghost girl" peels off and records layers upon layers of brutal human geometries. Circles and cells, "mausoleum[s] to empire," "breast/of resentment," lost vowels, all signal shapes a world possesses. I hear Lessing and Rich, Clifton and Sexton, accompanying Brancaccio as she explodes both the myths and the realities of the "dutiful daughter" and devoted wife, partner, mother, lover. She works with needles (both flesh-surgical and cloth-wed) and pen. Brancaccio never flinches from rage; she rides it, thirsty for mortal forgiveness and clarity. Sensuous, enticing, the woman knows "love, the great/transversal," and it's love's unmediated gaze that I admire and receive in this fine debut.

Judith Vollmer, author of six books of poetry, including The Sound Boat: New and Selected Poems (University of Wisconsin Press 2022).

In Fierce Geometry, Mary Brancaccio tallies with exquisite detail ("rust on the rim of an oxygen tank") and unflinching honesty ("I cannot write: too raw, too raw") the gains and losses of a woman coming of age sexually and politically: "A growl like thunder deep inside me." The death of her mother triggers both resentment for "acts of cruelty" and abiding forgiveness, as well as awareness of herself as burgeoning artist: "Deep in me beats / a rag picker's pulse / gathering, gathering." Whether gauging love's pleasures or reckoning its consequences, Brancaccio writes with exactitude and wonder: "my Lazarus tongue slept until wakened."

-Michael Waters, author of sixteen books of poetry, including Caw (BOA Editions 2020).