Nancy Bevilaqua

Gospel of the Throwaway Daughter: Poems Nancy Bevilaqua

"Nancy Bevilaqua's poems beautifully incorporate the language of apocryphal and Gnostic texts, as well as Roman mythology, giving us pollinated lines full of an understanding of what it means to love supernaturally and to feel limited by our physicality. The characters of the New Testament are blooming, are transformed, are given true voices that are calling out past the limitations of the body. The images in these poems juxtapose the sand under our feet with stardust, uniting the sad truths of death, time, and money with elusive, honey-dripping truths that hint at a larger world."--David Rawson, Author of We Are Lovers Who Forgot Dinosaurs*
"...Gospel of the Throwaway Daughter could well have been found tightly sealed in a jar in Qumran alongside its earlier gnostic cousins. These poems, quiet, but confident in their passion for love, desire, and holiness, echo to the Gospels and back. Taking the modernist dictum to heart to 'make it new', Bevilaqua, like H. D. before her, has taken stock of her poetic ancestry and focused it, channeling her myriad source texts, blending language, time, and voice, to create something lovely and new."--Jordi Alonso, Author of Honeyvoiced*"...takes a bold look at the New Testament and the Gnostic gospels, questioning belief, faith, dogma, and the nature of religion itself while creating a new world where 'we will / find / what strangeness comes to bless.' Despite the cruelty of the world both in biblical times, and now, we are reminded to 'Pretend it doesn't matter / how the hawk will devil fragile birds that we set free.' Bevilaqua's verse reassures us, 'It's only a matter of time / before a blessing / comes along' in this beautiful, sensitive collection."--Shaindel Beers, Author of A Brief History of Time and The Children's War and Other Poems*"...an ethereal, uplifting collection that weaves a poetic quilt of expertly crafted word choices and deep, sometimes dark imagery. It seems to blend a glimmer of hope with even the darkest poem, capturing the reader and holding him until the very end." --Kevin D. LeMaster, Tupelo Press 30/30 Poet *