Praise for Daughter of the Hangnail
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“For the variety of its interests and sources, for the musicality of its lines, the clarity and diversity of its diction and for the high value it places on the idea of poetry, I choose Rebecca Reynolds’ Daughter of the Hangnail for this prize.”

—Ann Lauterbach, in her citation (Norma Farber First Book Award)

“This fun, bracingly smart first collection balances speculative epistimologies against surprising, seen things, panning from incident (‘man discovered with over 7OO birds’) to remote tangent: ‘his poor head, startled, / the way a floorpan is startled with wings.’ Reynolds’ comparisons propose and test definitions of self, pain, meaning; ‘The heart— / a canned tulip— / cannot bear itself. And the mind’s light masonry / houses a crap shoot, waterlit.’ . . . Reynolds stands out for her sharp juxtapositions, for her generous empathies, and for her sometimes-exceptional ear.”

—Stephen Burt, The Boston Review