A new poetry volume, a Harvard graduate doing great things, and a novel set in rural Vermont
By Nina MacLaughlin Globe Correspondent,Updated January 20, 2021, 6:39 p.m.
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The body tells the story
In her perceptive and powerful new collection of poetry, âWomen in the Waiting Room,â Kirun Kapur aims her attention on the female body, its transgressions, how it is transgressed, and how it transcends those transgressions. Kapur, poetry editor of âThe Drum,â who has taught at Brandeis and BU, and now teaches at Amherst College, does not shy away from violence. She writes of a face battered with a broomstick, and other brutalities: âFor years this face / I trained my mind to un-seeâ / cheek eaten away by fish, / girl-body, washed up / in the canal, wrappedâ / the brand identified as Glad.â Thereâs menace and violation here, and lines of unflinching wisdom: âFor a girl to be innocent she has to be dead.â A repeated se