Quiet Armor

Stevie Edwards is a lecturer in the Department of English at Clemson University and poetry editor of the South Carolina Review. Her books and chapbooks include Sadness Workshop, Humanly, and Good Grief, and her poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere.

• ParthenogenesisWindow ShoppingEasy as PieLadylikeNobody Is LostWhat Is Left to Say About the BodyComposedPortrait of My Mother, Age 56Spell for Undoing a Life SentenceEssay on GunsVerityClytemnestra, Daughter of Leda, Beholds a SwanDream without MenRed SpellMouthySelf-Portrait as MedusaCalling Her NamesElegy for LaviniaFive Days Before the ElectionRumor Has ItDrunk Bitch Dreams of a Luminous StreamBabyloveHarm’s WayDrunk Bitch Wants to Fuck Like a ManAfter the Election I Woke UpWhat I LeftLearning to Leave a Bad Thing AloneDrunk Bitch Tries Her Hand at RecoveryMedusa with the Head of Harvey WeinsteinThe AstonishingA Few More Lines on LaviniaSome Things We CarriedMedusa as ShieldDread MythSome Lines in which I Want to Go OnAubade with the Longest EyelashesOn ProgenySome Threads from a DepressionOde to Chill PillsSelf-Portrait as Too MuchOn WantAll the Heavens Were a BellAnother Poem About PainDear ExtraterrestrialsOde to JoyEntreatyEpithalamionTapping TherapyNotesAcknowledgmentsThank You

The poems in Quiet Armor explore the shadows and nuances of one woman teetering between conventional, gendered expectations and witch/martyr/saint/goddess. These poems unfold with improvisational energy, creating an ongoing sense of a life lived, of time passing, of wisdom accrued through experience. It is difficult to write of life’s reparations, especially where love is concerned, without sentimentality—here, Edwards succeeds, and how: when we reach the end of the last poem, we feel we know the collection’s speaker intimately, and we feel—some of us, anyway—known." - Diane Suess, author of frank: sonnets