Deposition: Poems

Recent Iowa MFA Katie Ford (who also holds a Harvard M.A. in Divinity) explores an altogether grittier, more disturbing register of American violence and Christian belief in her first collection, Deposition. Though some poems (especially near the end of the book) show too clear a debt to Jorie Graham, much of Ford's work anatomizes her very own, and very striking, fascination with first things, last things and the problem of evil. Especially compelling are several long-lined poems entitled ""Last Breath"": in one of those, ""They blindfolded her put her in the closet for a month/ they didn't want her dead grass pulled out they wanted her to believe.""