BOOKS
A Penny Saved
Willow Books
In her second full-length collection, A Penny Saved, Arisa White’s elegantly harrowing poems investigate the idea of the “captive” within spousal abuse. Often utilizing the voice of the “good wife” Penny, these poems bring to the fore the effects of mental abuse in juxtaposition to a patriarchal world that tries to swallow the voice of Penny. White’s poems drift from stream of consciousness—to afterthought—to dialogue in a way that exhibits her flexible and intimate relationship with language. With this dexterity, Penny’s voice is realized.
Hurrah’s Nest
Buy from Powell’s (comment on Hurrah’s Nest and you could win free books!)
Arisa White’s poems allow us to bear witness alongside her to the sound and vision of a family desperately searching for itself inside its wounds, afflictions and brief triumphs. It is a requiem for her loved ones, “polished until it’s opal.” So polished that it’s not hard to see our own faces, our own families speaking back to us through each unflinching mirror that she holds up to herself and her kin in the guise of poetry. A dynamic debut for a voice unafraid to “tread the shit that mothers this ground.” —Tyehimba Jess, author of leadbelly
CHAPBOOKS
Post Pardon
Mouthfeel Press
A stunning collection of poems that arranges and deranges the post-partum experience. White’s syntax creates a remarkable fluidity that results in an undeniable tonal achievement of the collection as a whole. The poems in this sequence are brilliant and harrowing. Post Pardon is a breathtaking collection that introduces Arisa White as a major new talent. — Cate Marvin, author of Fragment of the Head of a Queen
Disposition for Shininess (sold out)
Factory Hollow Press
White’s poems are sprawling or tight, playful and compassionate, stark and brutally honed to capture the core of the metaphor that she extends and warps and snaps and releases to a newness. This is innovation at its core: an ability to make new the old, to make unrecognizable the familiar, to comfort and destroy, to build the concept while also building the narrative (and lyric). This innovation is most noticeable in the titular poem, “Disposition for Shininess”, a six-part, eight-page poem (the second poem in the book) that expands the lyric presented in the first poem, “This is How it Went in Luke”. Where “This is How it Went in Luke” builds on an anaphora, “The daughter of,” and stages the book as religious/spiritual beginnings, “Disposition for Shininess” puts the narrative pieces in place. We learn about the births of various members of the family, and White, a master craftician, plays with physical birth, emotional birth, spiritual birth, the birth of geography, and the physical mappings between the siblings, the mother, and the mother’s lover. In White’s hands, every image is compressed and conflated to hold as much emotional resonance as possible: “Like over and over again we a post-it/to some stone she had to swallow,/some pain that can’t be exfoliated down” (1: 20-22); “She pulls her hair and there’s a widow./Slicked, she stands at the peak of her thoughts./Our mother polishes her requiem until it’s an opal./Watch it long it glistens like a leach” (2: 12-15); “We fold the smaller one into the bigger one/until we are one child our mother cannot hold.//. . .We know this exquisite corpse between us” (4: 2,3, 14). This poem, similar to others in the book, drops clues and picks them up, working deeply on nuance. —Metta Sama, Historical Imperatives in Arisa White’s Disposition for Shininess and Sara Veglahn’s Closed Histories
ANTHOLOGIES
Another & Another: An Anthology From the Grind Daily Writing Series
Bull City Press
Cave Canem Anthology XII: Poems 2008-2009
Willow Books
The Woman I've Become: 37 Women Share Their Journeys From Toxic Relationships to Self Empowerment
Pixelita Press
Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality
Sibling Rivalry Press
Knocking at the Door: Poems for Approaching the Other
Birch Bench Press