To Sing You, and to Shout

"How can a poem tell / all that is of and behind the two of us," begins the opening poem of To Sing You, and to Shout, and while one poem may not be able to capture a fraught relationship with an unstable mother, Jessica Covil-Manset's poems across this collection certainly bring readers into the complexity, into "the pain-pleasure of who we are." These brave and vulnerable poems show us empty cupboards and manipulation as well as nice phone calls and doubled-over laughter, walking us through the depths of memory toward the relief of understanding and letting go.

-Katie Manning, EIC of Whale Road Review & author of Hereverent and Tasty Other

Jessica Covil-Manset's To Sing You, and to Shout is a lyrical tapestry of memory, love, and loss, spun from the delicate threads of a fraught mother-daughter relationship. With each line, the poet invites us to listen closely-to the edge in a mother's voice, the quiet ache of painful memories, and the waves of feeling that crash against the shore of self. The collection dances between moments of tenderness and haunting absence, tracing the contours of childhood and the scars that linger as we learn to let go. These poems, fierce and vulnerable, are an offering of both ode and protest to the archive of memory. To Sing You, and to Shout offers readers an arresting meditation on the spaces we inhabit and the voices we continually carry, reaching across time to touch the moments we cannot forget.

-Jessica Q. Stark, Poetry Editor for AGNI & author of Buffalo Girl