In the Year of Hurricane Agnes

Michelle Reale's IN THE YEAR OF HURRICANE AGNES places the past in a 70's green glass soda bottle and shakes, presenting a snapshot of family life, inherited trauma, and a journey toward healing childhood wounds. Every sequence is highly quotable and full of blood, including the women, wrapped in pinchy white bras and floating in and out in "the aerosol mist of Aqua Net." . Kristy Bowen author of Sex & Violence Michelle Reale's, IN THE YEAR OF HURRICANE AGNES contains dynamic prose poems which peer into the profundity of the mundane and the traumatic to confront the storms building up inside us, inside our painfully close families, inside our vibrant cultures, inside time and memory. Reale's understated yet engaging voice and control of language and line reveal a relatable aesthetic and memorable prose poems. In Reale's illuminating collection, she writes, "We can never take all of us with us. Something is always left behind." Luckily for readers, this fresh, nuanced, magnetic voice stays with us; a must-read!-Jose Hernandez Diaz, author of The Fire Eater and Bad Mexican, Bad American.