This debut full-length hybrid collection of essays and poetry explores the moments of joy and chaotic hilarity that mingle with the experiences of trauma and trauma recovery.
Jane Marshall Fleming writes with boldness and shows the beauty in every moment amidst violent chaos, embracing joy just as much as darkness. Moving from a backdrop of a small Virginia town and eventually finding herself in the freedom and wilderness of the desert, readers will follow the author on her journey mapping her skin, sharing in her joys, grief, pain, loss, discovering love and self-growth, night-blooming like a desert flower.
┃Rhythm & Bones Press ┃
“I was a child playing hopscotch without the chalk lines to hold me in.”
Violence/Joy/Chaos by Jane Marshall Fleming is a visceral collection of poems and essays about a life of heartache, joy, pain, drugs, loss, and healing. The raw emotions pouring from this collection is breathtaking and disconcerting. Jane’s young life has been spread across valleys and mountains—atmosphere and earth. This outpouring of honesty is unchained and floats across the pages and into the reader’s mind and heart. Both violence and joy are displayed chaotically yet still with a clear, illuminated path of forward motion.
The author’s unvarnished presentation of emotions, actions, and choices is riddled with both melancholy and hope. We are all burdened by loss and anxiety, and Jane captures her own experiences to show us that we are not alone, even when the darkness closes in. Drugs have played a large role in Jane’s experiences, altering her mind and sending her into highs and lows. Through it all, Jane constantly runs barefoot, despite the danger of cuts and bruises to tender soles. This image of bare feet that are both vulnerable and strong is striking throughout. The pleasure of the earth under each foot, drawing its magnetism into the body, beautifully captures Jane’s connection to the ground and that feeling of being solidly anchored, even when her life becomes unmoored. The constant bleeding and healing of her feet show that while we suffer our burdens, we also heal and are made whole again, time after time. This cycle mimics the seasons of life, of the earth, of the cosmos, and Jane shares with us her small place in all that chaos.
These essays and poems in Violence/Joy/Chaos are boisterous and tumultuous; however, the story remains intact as Jane outlines events through both prose and verse. This short collection of one woman’s turbulent journey is quick to read but will linger and permeate the mind and soul. No one is immune or exempt from such chaos, but how we endure the journey and eventually peek out from the other side are what define us and what give us courage, strength, and hope to carry on. Jane has unabashedly given us this gift of her organic truth so that we can reflect on our own chaotic journey of violence and joy.
Enter the giveaway below on or before April 10, 2020, for a chance to win an autographed copy of Violence/Joy/Chaos by Jane Marshall Fleming.
I received a free copy of this book from Lone Star Book Blog Tours in exchange for my honest review.
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| Bourdeau Photo |
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| 4/4/20 | Top Five List | That’s What She’s Reading |
| 4/5/20 | Collages | Forgotten Winds |
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| 4/9/20 | Review | Reading by Moonlight |
WOW. So much to chew on in this review. Thank you — I really am looking forward to reading this book.