The Nameless by Brandi George
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POETRY: Occult, mental health, possession, mortality, religion, love and sexuality
Publication Date: August 8th, 2023
Paperback ISBN: 979-8-9865233-3-0
Winner of the Eyelands Best Poetry Collection 2023 Award
Brandi George’s autobiographical collection, The Nameless, explores the speaker’s relationship with the figure of Death as a friend, a tormentor, a savior, and a capricious and mysterious force. Death is her constant companion through an exorcism, the burning of her poems, an attempted suicide, and finally, her preoccupation with worldly success. Throughout all of this, she is guided by her two great loves and an unhealthy obsession with Kurt Cobain.
Publication Date: August 8th, 2023
Paperback ISBN: 979-8-9865233-3-0
Winner of the Eyelands Best Poetry Collection 2023 Award
Brandi George’s autobiographical collection, The Nameless, explores the speaker’s relationship with the figure of Death as a friend, a tormentor, a savior, and a capricious and mysterious force. Death is her constant companion through an exorcism, the burning of her poems, an attempted suicide, and finally, her preoccupation with worldly success. Throughout all of this, she is guided by her two great loves and an unhealthy obsession with Kurt Cobain.
“It’s not possible for me to imagine a book more challenging or more pleasurable than this one. Does that sound like a contradiction? It isn’t. There is a single speaker but two alternating voices here, one that speaks directly to us of hard knocks and then happiness and another that paints an updated portrait of the fairy-tale heroine Thumbelina, who also goes through some rough patches before her life takes a turn for the better. As you read these entwined tales of trauma and redemption, you’ll dive deep but be saved at the end – poetry will save you, as it only can when it’s in the hands of someone as inventive as Brandi George. I want to re-read this book. I want everyone to read it.” –David Kirby
“With an ear for music and a heart for narrative, Brandi George has spun an ambitious epic of the psyche that seamlessly blends inner and outer worlds. Capacious, sprawling, and ambitious, The Nameless applies chthonic archetypal energy to the trauma of the contemporary dysfunctional family, uniting myth, memoir, and music in a wrenching bildungsroman of poetic survival. George pulls no punches, generously channeling the pain of a creative life-journey as well as the power of the forces that can redeem it: Nature, Imagination, and the Divine Feminine.” —Annie Finch, author of Spells: New and Selected Poems
“Brandi George creates a magical, frightening, and compassionate world in The Nameless. Visible and invisible experiences meld with objects below ground and above ground to create a way of survival. Abuse, mycelium, exorcism, love, trees, loneliness, mushrooms, friendship, trees, poetry, moon and more weave their way through this stunning lyrical narrative. Here we have a new language, a new mythology, a new way to live in a world that tries its best to tear us apart, but for safety we know that we can “drag our comforter outside / sleep with arms flung open // all around our comrades / ants moths cockroaches caterpillars constellations.” Here, we hold everything the world dishes out. Here, in joining forces with the earth, we survive and we celebrate.”—Terry Ann Thaxton, author of Mud Song
Brandi George is the author of Gog (Black Lawrence Press, 2015) the play in verse, Faun (Plays Inverse, 2019), and The Nameless (Kernpunkt Press, 2023). Her poems have recently appeared in American Poetry Review, Fence, and Orion. She teaches writing at FSW in Fort Myers, Florida.
“With an ear for music and a heart for narrative, Brandi George has spun an ambitious epic of the psyche that seamlessly blends inner and outer worlds. Capacious, sprawling, and ambitious, The Nameless applies chthonic archetypal energy to the trauma of the contemporary dysfunctional family, uniting myth, memoir, and music in a wrenching bildungsroman of poetic survival. George pulls no punches, generously channeling the pain of a creative life-journey as well as the power of the forces that can redeem it: Nature, Imagination, and the Divine Feminine.” —Annie Finch, author of Spells: New and Selected Poems
“Brandi George creates a magical, frightening, and compassionate world in The Nameless. Visible and invisible experiences meld with objects below ground and above ground to create a way of survival. Abuse, mycelium, exorcism, love, trees, loneliness, mushrooms, friendship, trees, poetry, moon and more weave their way through this stunning lyrical narrative. Here we have a new language, a new mythology, a new way to live in a world that tries its best to tear us apart, but for safety we know that we can “drag our comforter outside / sleep with arms flung open // all around our comrades / ants moths cockroaches caterpillars constellations.” Here, we hold everything the world dishes out. Here, in joining forces with the earth, we survive and we celebrate.”—Terry Ann Thaxton, author of Mud Song
Brandi George is the author of Gog (Black Lawrence Press, 2015) the play in verse, Faun (Plays Inverse, 2019), and The Nameless (Kernpunkt Press, 2023). Her poems have recently appeared in American Poetry Review, Fence, and Orion. She teaches writing at FSW in Fort Myers, Florida.