Abstract
Shortlisted for the 2009 Lampman-Scott Award (for the best book of poetry in the National Capital Region) Brenda Leifso’s first volume of poetry is a stunning debut: haunting, disturbing but resolutely beautiful. With an unflinching eye, Leifso explores the uncertainty of memory, the legacy of place, the powerful dynamics of sexuality and secrecy, and the violence inherent in family relations. Her central section, “The Theban Women,” is a multi-voiced re-imagining of Euripides’s The Bacchae; this drama in verse gives voice to women long silent, and together with Leifso’s more personal poems, it forms a book of exceptional power from a poet whose voice is as honest as it is beautiful.