Woman with Crows, Paperback

April J. Asbury's debut poetry collection, Woman with Crows, explores the roles of women from childhood to adulthood. From "Big-Kid Legends" to "The Obituary Phase of Life," Asbury weaves together the voices of myth, folklore, and family story. What emerges is a vibrant tapestry of family, love, and loss.

Crystal Wilkinson, author of Birds of Opulence, suggests the poems "delve into mythologies old and new." Mina from Dracula makes an appearance, as do the unnamed sister of Icarus and a certain sleepy, apple-eating princess.

Many of the poems explore traditional tasks, such as cleaning, canning, and caregiving, as Rita Quillen, author of Wayland and Some Note You Hold. These are poems of "the complex social contract," Quillen says, "that women sign without knowing it." Keeping the family history, preserving the stories as efficiently as the summer's harvest, Woman with Crows feels the weight of the past while flying toward survival.

This is a book "engaged with deeper, more difficult beauties of the world," according to Diane Gilliam, author of Kettlebottom and Dreadful Wind & Rain. "These poems have a wingspan that gathers both light and dark, silence and voice, this side and the other."

From this side to the other, Woman with Crows prepares to make journey both familiar and strange . . . But always full of wonder.