The Dream Women Called

“‘I’d like to hold something that’s breathing,’ says Wilson in The Dream Women Called. This voice calling out in desire returns, recedes, and returns in this marvelous book of wanting more. Imagine a world pulsating with the skin’s craving, inflamed with red, yet narrated with clear, slicing detail—Wilson delivers us to that world where the speaker has a desire for desire. . . . Wilson guides us to the fields, through the native grasses, past the trainyards to the long tunnel—where the dream women live, where the ripping and healing happens. An amazing book!” -- Jan Beatty, author of The Body Wars
“In Wilson’s stunning new collection, the poet demands of herself a deep honesty few have the courage and humility to explore. Flashes of observant detail ground these poems in the facts of a woman’s life, familiar yet utterly new. There is no strain or trickery. What the poet sees is lit from within, in encounters that cut straight to the core of emotional truth. Wilson’s unadorned language and unexpected angle of vision place her in the lineage of Dickinson, that acute observer of her own psychology. These are poems I’ve been thirsting for. It's a joy to drink deep.” -- Joan Larkin, author of My Body
“Wilson’s poems deftly navigate opposing forces. Taut, yet compassionate, understated yet full of longing, Wilson balances a desire to know and be in the world, with a desire to know ‘the well’ inside. ‘I had no center’ she writes, but this work creates a center that is powerful and moving, even when tentative—especially when tentative. It is this tension that makes these poems so human. Walking out of the confines of the past, Wilson puts her unsteady feet to the earth and walks forward. She knows the dangers of being seen—she tells the truth anyway.” -- Anne Marie Macari, author of Heaven Beneath