Master Suffering

In Master Suffering, Burroughs’ poems are a pendulum swinging between yield and command. The bodies of this book are supplicant yet seething—they want nothing more than to survive. But how does a woman survive? One’s own healthy body helps, but illness is one of the masters of this book...

The Vital System features work that highlights how the body is always at stake—vulnerable—and how the poet dares to try and illuminate what she has called “the protective capability of violence.” particular tensions that are gendered and racial as well as essentially human.