a body more tolerable

""jaye simpson's a body more tolerable is a singular achievement. Her poetic project, at once forward-dawning and ancestral, both revolutionary and decolonizing, is given total expression in this book. These poems moved me immensely; there is so much beauty, feeling, and power in all of them. No one is writing like jaye simpson."" --Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of A Minor Chorus and Coexistence ""a body more tolerable is a work at once open and lyric, fearless and tender. Expanding grief's territory into moments of relation and desire, simpson also challenges 'home, as a wayward theory' into a poetics of self-mothering, of being beyond becoming. This collection is a fierce and resistant nurturing."" --Liz Howard, author of Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent and Letters in a Bruised Cosmos ""jaye simpson is one of the most compelling and incisive voices of their generation. In a body more tolerable, they seize the English language and command it into an instrument that meticulously sings the realities of their present moment. I found solace, fire, and a relentless love for living and loving in these poetic offerings. a body more tolerable is a wayward map, and it is gorgeous. I'll carry it close to my heart."" --Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies ""'i can't retire this tongue, ' jaye simpson writes in a sophomore collection that creeps, howls, floats, shatters. an Indigenous speaker grapples with survival, the foster care system, the body, conceptions of motherhood, and trans girlhood in this heart-wrenching leap that returns what is most precious to us through lush language and keen lyricism. each poem is a portal of longing, ferocity, softness. i can't recommend it enough."" --Kinsale Drake, National Poetry Series-winning author of The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket ""Here, memorial flowers drip from parting lips, a swarm of bees escapes the throat, croaking a new magic in the face of old fears. Here, 'in the years of held breath, ' jaye simpson generously transports us through a body more tolerable, revealing with every page a blessed haunting, a knowing witness, an incendiary inheritance, and a different kind of return. Here, we are invited to discover sacred truths, yes, 'a scream can be a song... a sideways water... a cocoon of never happening... my heart, my heart, my heart, my heart, my heart...'"" --Jillian Christmas, author of The Gospel of Breaking