The Taffeta Parable

The Taffeta Parable is as unflinching as any fairy tale in its fierce refusal to look away from what it is to be born both mortal and female, to have come into the world with a strange, budding body-a bag of flesh and dreams, a burning cathedral-that empties and fills. With a fresh metaphoric sensibility, Laura Ingram invites her readers into a haunted realm of magic and mystery in which we are all a little witchy. Here, night stands at the window on its hind legs, and when the speaker yawns, she covers her mouth so that her ghost cannot slip out.

-Kathleen Graber, author of The Eternal City

The Taffeta Parable is a lyrical collection of poetry, hymns to lost girlhood. Often addressed to "you," these poems bring to the surface an interior monologue, a voice that hungers to be heard while the speaker yearns to disappear-or at least to blend in more seamlessly to a world often at odds with adolescent girls and female desire.

Laura Ingram is a poet of exquisite grace, a writer who brings her sensibility and wisdom to the page. Evocative and rich, her poems conjure both the sharp edges and raw beauty of this world. Her work will leave you breathless.

-Patty Smith, author of The Year of Needy Girls