Darla Himeles (Poetry) | Philadelphia, PA
Booking Fee: |
Negotiable |
Will Travel: |
Anywhere |
Contact: |
https://darlahimeles.com/contact/ |
Website: |
https://darlahimeles.com/ |
Books
Blurbs, Press & Reviews
“When I bleed, / I touch everything,” Darla Himeles teases one conservative cousin, and in poems loving and transgressive, affectionate and angry, she confronts the “annihilation” of creatures small (passenger pigeon) and large (blue whale), including humans (always small), such as Jewish ancestors who inhaled the almond scent of Zyklon B and, more recently, the Black and Native American victims of sustained and authorized violence. “My heart doesn’t ache,” wrote Adrienne Rich; “sometimes though it rages.” In these beautiful and urgent poems, Himeles’ heart rages against our approaching extinctions.
—Michael Waters, author of Celestial Joyride
Look at Darla Himeles, there on the razor’s edge of survival as a Jew, note taker of past and future extinctions, a poet fearless of science, unafraid of love or laughter. Listen as she sings love songs to the cephalopod dead, the manatees’ eyes “cataracted by microplastics,” and the Colorado that “forgets it’s a river.” Smile as she imagines T.S. Eliot becoming a blue crab. Meditate with her on our own eyes, possible “reservoirs of the Anthropocene’s / last sunlit hours.” Himeles helps us know our place as specks of a star, kin to all animals, in poems that dance with the pleasure of language.
—Alicia Ostriker, author of Waiting for the Light
Whether she is describing the day Adrienne Rich died or how our weeping may sound like mating songs, Darla Himeles captures all that it is to be a poet, today, right now. Her poems have melody & a lilac kind of voice, but what is most striking is how she guides you through our human condition, our place on this earth, & the ways in which we hurt & love. Flesh Enough is a beautiful & important debut.
—Yesenia Montilla, author of The Pink Box
