Elya Braden
Coming Soon!
Dragonfly Puzzle Box
by Elya Braden
ISBN: 978-1-962405-94-2
$17.00 (+ $4.63 US Shipping)
Pre-order discount: $13.60
(+ $4.63 US Shipping)
through August 15
Coming later: also available as an Ebook from online retailers:
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Elya Braden is a writer and mixed-media artist living in Ventura County, CA. She is the Founder and President of HaGomel, a nonprofit providing expressive arts programs for women who have experienced trauma and is an editor for Gyroscope Review. She is the author of the chapbooks Open The Fist and The Sight of Invisible Longing. Her work has been published in Anthropocene, Pine Row Press, Rhino, South Florida Poetry Journal, The Shore, Thimble, Wild Roof Journal, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. Visit her online at elyabraden.com.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
In Dragonfly Puzzle Box, Elya Braden’s luminous poems shine a healing light into the spaces of a life lived in pieces. From an early marriage born in hope and dissolved in divorce, a motherhood forged in the shadow of a flawed mother, to the rediscovery of self in the many-mirrored hall of relationships, each poem is a fragment of strength, a portrait of resilience. Like a kintsugi bowl, these poems celebrate the cracks, and answer the question: how does one create a life of beauty and purpose out of what was broken? The poet’s words are the molten gold connecting the past, mending the present, and illuminating a future of creativity, joy, and love.
* Some poems in the collection contain themes and images of emotional and sexual abuse.
ADVANCE PRAISE:
Dragonfly Puzzle Box is a container for iridescent poems of a woman’s soul as she struggles to reach freedom, startling poems of lyrical brilliance and trouble, poems that illuminate the wound of being human along with the mystery of confluence – woundedness and beauty intertwined. As Adrienne Rich said in Diving into the Wreck, “The words are purposes. / The words are maps. / I came to see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail.”
—Marsha de la O, author of Creature
Trigger Warning—here you will encounter husbands-to-be, ex-husbands, lovers, other lovers, and reflections on family, both specific and universal. Sharon Olds describes her poetry as “apparently personal.” With their charged language, jeweled images, their griefs and erotic variety, I’d describe the poems of Dragonfly Puzzle Box as Dazzlingly Personal.
—Suzanne Lummis, author of Crime Wave
