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In her stunning second collection, poet Olena Kalytiak Davis confirms her reputation as a breathtaking verbal acrobat, a daredevil on the high wire of life and love. Her deeply personal poems echo everything from nursery rhymes to classics, revealing poetry buried in ordinary speech. Whether remonstrating with a former lover or evoking her young children, the poet who reveals herself here is appealingly vulnerable yet gutsy, by turns blunt and tender. With dexterity and wit she stretches language to the wildest boundaries of poetic possibility: hers is a voice intimate and assured, her observations of the world delivered in love notes addressed to us all.

"did I mention my first kiss was extracted
by someone who never should have been that
lucky?" - From "Keep Some Stuff for Yourself"

"And Her Soul Out of Nothing is unlike any other collection I can remember reading in recent literature. There is an eerie precision to Davis's work that renders each moment in both its absolute clarity and ultimate fragility." --Rita Dove

Olena Kalytiak Davis's first collection, And Her Soul Out of Nothing, was selected by Rita Dove for the Brittingham Prize for poetry in 1997. She has been included in three Best American Poetry anthologies and has received a Rona Jaffee Foundation writers award and a Pushcart Prize. She lives and writes in Anchorage, Alaska.