Buried [A Place]

Never have I seen the female form so unearthed -- not just the body -- but the sound of its voice, the shape of its language. As BURIED resurrects, the Father's house is upended. A house built and maintained by enslaved bodies, sourced from an exploited earth. A house that is now on fire. There is no tongue as deft as Sue Scavo's to both name the crimes of the patriarchs who lived as gods and to indict her own willingness to be their supplicant. Until they point downward, to Hell, as if the inferno weren't right here and now. The lie of transcendence is, in truth, the molten core of violence. In a voice all atrium and ventricle, Scavo renounces the descent, reclaims what has been interred. The body as sacred topography. -- Amy Irvine, author of Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land "In the middle of being lost, you have to understand -- I prayed for a straight path, a true path, a way-through path," so begins Sue Scavo's tremendous work, BURIED [A PLACE]. Scavo leads the reader, vicariously, often with direct address, along a path of self-retrieval. Embedded in the text is a correlation, argument, and dialog with Dante's own journey described in Inferno of his Commedia. Scavo delves into the territory of the woman's experience, her body, her relationships; between mentor/student, brother/sister, father/daughter. She follows the often-perplexing states of love, trust, transference, transgression, violation, to eventual autonomy, and if not forgiveness, understanding. Scavo's use of language, her tight turn of words, are like stepping stones, like a torch in a dark wood. She is a true new voice in poetry's landscape. Take notice. -- Karla Van Vliet, author of She Speaks Tongues Any work that explores the different dimensions of trauma -- historical, social, personal, psychological, cultural -- as courageously and inventively as BURIED [A PLACE], deserves a warm welcome. In this remarkable journey -- an inner journey as much as outer, and an exploration of the meaning of the "journey of healing" -- Scavo revisits Dante in a series of tightly wrought Cantos. The poem takes us on an unflinching descent into the dream-scape and myth-realm where the foundations of our burning world of patriarchy and trauma are formed and perhaps capable of being transformed. But this fearless voyage into the underworld is also an implicit ascent -- a personal, emblematic and powerful search for new light amid the dark. -- Henry Shukman, author of One Blade of Grass