Via Combusta
Winner of the 2021 New American Poetry Prize
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Praise for Via Combusta
"Every poem in Sara Fetherolf 's incantatory debut collection Via Combusta is a keeper," says Barry. "Here is a hard-won wisdom, tempered by both pain and truth, and distilled from a life spent 'jumping from cage to cage' in search of home. 'I left day-old loaves at crossroads on the new moon, praying hard for an out, an ending, for uncross me uncross me uncross me-' Ultimately the magic Fetherolf unearths is the simple everyday resilience of the human soul, 'to not flinch when [the monster] looks you in the eye.' Via Combusta charms as it testifies."
—Quan Barry, author of author of Water Puppets and Asylum
"Be mouth, the speaker of Sara Fetherolf's haunting Via Combusta commands: talk back, tell how. By turns incantatory and plainspoken, these poems sing, pray, curse, chant, praise, petition, cast spells and conjure an unsettling world in which danger is never far off, where hunting guns hum in a locked closet and Remember is the name of a monster. This is a remarkable debut collection in which survival is hard won-and always conditional."
- Donna Masini, author of 4:30 Movie