Slamming Open the Door

"Readers will have to step outside of a familiar, comforting tradition of poetic grief while reading this book....To read [Slamming Open the Door] is to stand onstage with a writer who finds herself in the middle of a story in which she has been reluctantly cast."--The New York Times Book Review

"I really love the poems we're about to hear. They're beautifully written. But some of them really hurt. They're about the worst thing that can happen to a mother, the murder of her child."--Terry Gross, Host of Fresh Air

"Written with skill in tight, spare lines without sentimentality or melodrama, Bonanno launches readers through the experience, one that evokes a universal terror...A stunning first book."--Library Journal

"When Emily Dickinson wrote the line 'After great pain, a formal feeling comes' I think she was referring to poems--and the occasions that make them impossible to not write--like these. Spare, unflinching, and powerful, the poems in Slamming Open the Door move me to the bone. How does one say I love this book, which I wish never had to be written? Only one way: I love this book. I wish it did not have to be written."--Thomas Lux

Of all the losses we may be asked to bear, the murder of one's child must be the most terrible. These poems evoke that keenly, seeking justice but transcending judgment as they grieve loss, celebrate love, and find healing.

From "True Confessions":

Don't pity me: I was too lazy to walkup the stairsto tuck her in at night.

When I brushed her hairI pulled hardon purpose.

And alwaysthe sharp, plaintive edgeon the rimof the spoonof my giving...

Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno is a contributing editor of The American Poetry Review and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for two poems from Slamming Open the Door. She currently teaches English and creative writing in Pennsylvania.