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Praise for Nightmares & Miracles (Winner of the 2020 Two Sylvias Press Wilder Series Poetry Book Prize):
In Nightmares & Miracles, Michelle Bitting again proves herself as a poet, her inquiries vital and deep, her concerns darkly personal and conscientiously worldly. Charged with remarkable imagination and formal dexterity, these poems ring with clarity and precision. Michelle deftly navigates the “unglamorous” noir territories of personal and political trauma while embracing the erotic mess of domestic life as “unstoppable fire” where she ultimately concludes “every stroke(‘s) a masterpiece…” She threads myth, loss, and love into intricate braids of bold prose and lyrical turns, holding her readers spellbound.
--Dorianne Laux, Finalist, 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Only As the Day is Long—New and Selected
In her latest collection, Michelle Bitting reminds us that from nightmares sometimes come miracles and from miracles a nightmare might lift its shadowy head. Here the Gods are as human as we are, and we, in turn, can sometimes be full of grace. Bitting is a citizen poet but with a seer’s eye. This new, dynamic, book of poems is more than a talisman we should carry with us—it's a guide that will lead us through the varied worlds we live in.
--Matthew Dickman, Husbandry (forthcoming from W.W. Norton, 2022)
Michelle Bitting’s newest collection deftly suspends the reader on a knife’s edge of everydayness: nightmares on one side, miracles on the other. And even after you come through, Bitting’s haunting questions remain: “at what point am I anyone?”…”can’t you love yourselves?” leading the reader to wonder if and how they will answer.
--Lynne Thompson, Los Angeles Poet Laureate, 2021-2022
In Nightmares & Miracles, Michelle Bitting again proves herself as a poet, her inquiries vital and deep, her concerns darkly personal and conscientiously worldly. Charged with remarkable imagination and formal dexterity, these poems ring with clarity and precision. Michelle deftly navigates the “unglamorous” noir territories of personal and political trauma while embracing the erotic mess of domestic life as “unstoppable fire” where she ultimately concludes “every stroke(‘s) a masterpiece…” She threads myth, loss, and love into intricate braids of bold prose and lyrical turns, holding her readers spellbound.
--Dorianne Laux, Finalist, 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Only As the Day is Long—New and Selected
In her latest collection, Michelle Bitting reminds us that from nightmares sometimes come miracles and from miracles a nightmare might lift its shadowy head. Here the Gods are as human as we are, and we, in turn, can sometimes be full of grace. Bitting is a citizen poet but with a seer’s eye. This new, dynamic, book of poems is more than a talisman we should carry with us—it's a guide that will lead us through the varied worlds we live in.
--Matthew Dickman, Husbandry (forthcoming from W.W. Norton, 2022)
Michelle Bitting’s newest collection deftly suspends the reader on a knife’s edge of everydayness: nightmares on one side, miracles on the other. And even after you come through, Bitting’s haunting questions remain: “at what point am I anyone?”…”can’t you love yourselves?” leading the reader to wonder if and how they will answer.
--Lynne Thompson, Los Angeles Poet Laureate, 2021-2022
Sample Poem:
Genes of 500-Million-Year-Old Sea Monsters Live Inside Us
~Live Science News, March 2021
Which is why when the sea swept me out beyond
The lifeguard’s safety mark, the red alarm buoy,
I surrendered to the call, this tidal swaddling--
Crowned and coddled in fish-scented batting
Of early morning fog, treading the sour
Currents, my hours fed to dark tentacles—eyes
Closed, face up to unformed light and whatever
Raptor might pierce the ribs of clouds above.
I let that icy crib carry, lure me off
In amniotic dream, away from the sad maternal
Act I’d watched shrinking on shore in paternal
Shade the more I bled and grew my gills.
Go, I would not. Unnatural, I know, to bare
My claws, tear the mirror, the original, saline
Cord. But so sweet, this primitive nursing, my
Nourished abyss, learning the fluid under-
World ways—by land, with wings, on thinnest air--
What was I? A girl uncoiled, horned and blinking
Out of her wet, unbridled deep, a risen
Beast—terrifying, a little spectacular.
Genes of 500-Million-Year-Old Sea Monsters Live Inside Us
~Live Science News, March 2021
Which is why when the sea swept me out beyond
The lifeguard’s safety mark, the red alarm buoy,
I surrendered to the call, this tidal swaddling--
Crowned and coddled in fish-scented batting
Of early morning fog, treading the sour
Currents, my hours fed to dark tentacles—eyes
Closed, face up to unformed light and whatever
Raptor might pierce the ribs of clouds above.
I let that icy crib carry, lure me off
In amniotic dream, away from the sad maternal
Act I’d watched shrinking on shore in paternal
Shade the more I bled and grew my gills.
Go, I would not. Unnatural, I know, to bare
My claws, tear the mirror, the original, saline
Cord. But so sweet, this primitive nursing, my
Nourished abyss, learning the fluid under-
World ways—by land, with wings, on thinnest air--
What was I? A girl uncoiled, horned and blinking
Out of her wet, unbridled deep, a risen
Beast—terrifying, a little spectacular.
