{"product_id":"nowhere-was-a-lake-9781954245884","title":"Nowhere Was a Lake","description":"Captivated by the simultaneously routine and disruptive nature of violence and desire, \u003ci\u003eNowhere Was a Lake\u003c\/i\u003e marks a luminous debut from poet Margaret Draft. \"What do you do when a horse dies? \/ You hollow out the land, \/\/ you try to make enough space, \/ and when you think you have enough, \/\/ keep digging.\" In these poems, our own tenderness endangers us, and yet -- when faced with the enormity of our hunger, an appetite that proclaims both the bounty of nourishment and our capacity for loss -- Draft keeps digging. \"He said this because \/\/ he himself had to enter the hole \/ with the horse and shovel, \/\/ shift the legs, reposition the head.\" The speaker here has an unflinching pragmatism, a characteristic that paradoxically makes her emotions all the more tangible. This is how you prospect a grave, she seems to say, but you'll be in it, too. You with your body among the other bodies. Draft rejects simple binaries, insisting that oblivion can be a place, that fidelity and betrayal can coexist in our most intimate relationships, that to live as a human animal means embodying both hunter and prey. Deft in its exploration of female sexuality, the emotional complexity of polyamory, and the distinction between freedom and abandonment, \u003ci\u003eNowhere Was a Lake\u003c\/i\u003e mesmerizes with its erotic pastorals and frank prose poems. \"Edge\" interrogates \"the dialectic of trust\" structuring romantic relationships and negotiated through sexual physics: \"It is not a question of whether you will \/ harm me, but whether you will \/ stick around long enough \/ to hold me when I am harmed.\" The risk and reward of such exploration is uncertainty: anything could happen, but anything could happen. \"In no place, going someplace, I know. \/ There are so few things I can say I know definitively. \/\/ But this must be the definition of plenty. \/ The sun slowly setting over the valley.\" And, yes, love may wend through the field as we thresh it. And, yes, we are in the light as it goes down.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Margaret Draft\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Four Way Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/15\/2024\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 90\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.36lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.01h x 6.16w x 0.02d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781954245884","brand":"Four Way Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42713255837833,"sku":"9781954245884","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0636\/9240\/6921\/files\/img_87590df2-cf34-400a-9425-a5bfd2f50065.jpg?v=1719607547","url":"https:\/\/sonsanddaughtersbooks.com\/products\/nowhere-was-a-lake-9781954245884","provider":"Sons and Daughters Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}