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Bain-Marie by Melissa Jordan
“The poems of Bain-Marie counter diffusion with distillation, and loss with creation, insisting that any “domestic alchemy” humans have invented to preserve our vision and experience is a form of art. Subtly, magically, Jordan’s poems make us aware of poetry as the most beguiling domestic alchemy of all, an uncanny medium impregnable with what is otherwise ephemeral: our histories and desires. There’s a wonderful iridescence to the voices Jordan creates. Though longing beats within her speakers like a pulse, they are also alert, analytical, skeptical, and self-aware. For these artists, success is less important than the striving to create, and so they show a fierce, protective tenderness toward the follies of making. Poems that ingather and interweave many planes of time, forms of wisdom, and spiritual practices are ones I most admire; in this book, permeated through and through with lore, ancient and modern alchemies, humor—and humours—I find immense nourishment and delight.” – Karen Holmberg
Melissa E. Jordan grew up in southeastern Connecticut. Her poems have appeared in The Cossack Review, Word Riot, Otis Nebula, Terrain, Off the Coast, and elsewhere. Jordan has worked as a newspaper reporter and for a hunger-relief