Praise for In a Body:

Emily Hockaday’s In a Body reads simultaneously like a meditation and masterclass on the pained body’s communion with what stings, breaks, bends and opens in the natural world. Through psalms on chronic pain, grief and intimacy, Hockaday considers the miracle of “this small boat . . . surviving and surviving and surviving” and “the metal in the subway pole / and the cosmic explosion / that sent those metals here.” These brief and breathtaking poems ask us to consider the ways in which both our bodies and our world betray, buoy and surprise us, posing questions about science, love, vulnerability, mortality and suffering. Ultimately, these poems ask—“what brought your molecules / close to mine in this one infinite Universe” and what does it mean to be most exquisitely, painfully alive?

—Joan Kwon Glass, author of Night Swim

For all of the admiration the term “Mother Earth” implies, Emily Hockaday’s powerful collection explores the parallels between the pain and mistreatment, the distrust or even downright hostility people have expressed both to the birthing human body and to our earth. Hockaday digs deep in her examination of pain, encountering bedrock, vernal pools, and other waters lapping inside of her. She dissolves the edges of her body until we stand with her, looking at Jupiter and listening to the voices of the dead, not with awe, but with grit, gratitude, and grief in equal measure. 

—Monica Wendel, author of No Apocalypse