Rise above the River (Able Muse Book Award for Poetry)

Book excerpt: In Kelly Rowe’s Rise above the River, we find a sister powerless to redress her brother’s fall from grace after the trauma of his childhood sexual abuse by a female authority figure. Rise above the River interrogates in a quest for answer, meaning, reason, justice, and mercy—along the way, exploring the conceit of the fallen angel with ekphrases on artwork such as Alexandre Cabanel’s L’ange déchu and Hugo Simberg’s The Wounded Angel. This powerful and emotionally charged collection is the winner of the 2021 Able Muse Book Award. PRAISE FOR RISE ABOVE THE RIVER Lucifer, Ismene, Alexander the Great, “an obscure Civil War hero,” a Florida railroad, “the dead middle of Mississippi,” an apron swaying and twisting on a clothesline—with these figures and images, as well as with letters and visits, memories and dreams, Kelly Rowe enables us to assemble a story that can’t be told directly, to compose a picture that can’t be faced head-on. And the limpid diction and confiding tone of Rise above the River both soften and strengthen a narrative voice that finds many ways to tell the ineffable. —Rachel Hadas, author of Pandemic Almanac In this haunting book of poems, a sister remembers her younger brother, who as a child seemed always to emit a golden light to match his golden boy-soprano voice. Adventurous, imaginative, a lover of trees and water, he was more Huck Finn than angel. Then, as Randall Jarrell once observed, something went wrong. Could it have been innate or could it have been, as the poet suspects, the ill attentions of one of her brother’s teachers, a woman who was never properly called out for her abuse? The lyrical reminiscences of the older sister, as she watches her brother grow in his estrangement, his greed, his inability to feel for others, contrast painfully with these aspects of his life and character. This is a beautifully written book about a man whose fall is irredeemable. The mystery is why. This is a shattering book of poems about lost innocence and beauty. —Mark Jarman, 2021 Able Muse Book Award judge, author of The Heronry From personal recounting and reflection to rethinking classical mythology, this collection presents an eclectic, engaging contemplation throughout, underscored by a haunting and often surprising rhyme that ties us doubly to the moment we are reading. In reading these poems, we are so often starkly surprised by the strong, sure leaps—“Snow falling. / Her white feet. / Her aria.” Sometimes quietly and sometimes loudly, these poems lead us into their important mix. The several reconciliations at the end draw these poems into closing, but in their moment they gift us with a persuasive sense of greater connection to things simply and innately significant—underscored by profound feeling. —Alberto Ríos, author of The World Has Need of You ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kelly Rowe’s chapbook Flying South on the Back of a Dove was published by the Texas Review Press in January 2019. Her second chapbook, Child Bed Fever, was selected for the 2021 Rane Arroyo Series, and published by Seven Kitchens Press in November 2022. She has recently published poems in journals including North American Review, New Ohio Review, 32 Poems, Massachusetts Review, Salamander, and New Letters. She lives in Flagstaff, Arizona, and works as a volunteer attorney, representing undocumented women.