Ellen Devlin Libri

Ellen Devlin's Rita is as subversive as it is wise. Rita's sassy "talk backs" to heroines from the canon may be feminist retellings but Devlin's project is more complex. Each insightful warning, discussion, or interrogation (with female characters of carefully chosen seminal texts) explores necessary questions of identity, agency, free will, power, and complicity. These poems are instruments of power--asserting, imagining, describing what it's like to be a woman today. I wish I read this book when I was a young woman. This is no ordinary debut collection; Devlin's attention to craft is masterful and her language fresh and fierce. "The windows and doors are locked and I can feel/ my mother's life barreling towards me." --Jennifer Franklin author of No Small Gift (Four Way Books, 2018)

"Heavenly Bodies at the Met explores the ecclesiastical garments created by well known designers inspired by Catholic liturgy. In this collection, Ellen Devlin describes the various gowns and garments with the descriptive eye reminiscent of Elizabeth Bishop. Many of the garments become reflective journeys through the poet's own life. Each supplies an emotional awareness that is rendered in vivid, concise language.