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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nIn Elizabeth Sylvia\u2019s lovely and haunting book, Shakespeare\u2019s women take the spotlight, unleashing their grief, rage, and desire to show us the roundness of their lives. You don\u2019t need to have studied the Bard to recognize these women captured in Sylvia\u2019s lush monologues and portraits\u2013mothers mourning their children, queens striving for power, girls disguising their bodies. In the opening poem, we read, \u201cAll\/they do is orbit, casting here and there\/reflected light, and when they light\/the path, it is a man\u2019s path they light.\u201d And yet in None but Witches<\/em>, Sylvia gives these women their own path, one richly illuminated with metaphor and wit. We are lucky to be invited on the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014Julie Danho, author of Those Who Keep Arriving<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n With her wonderful first book of poems, Elizabeth Sylvia celebrates in None but Witches<\/em> the teeming population of William Shakespeare\u2019s plays. From the book\u2019s first sentence she clarifies her joyfully critical theme: \u201cI used to believe the men who told me \/ Shakespeare was remarkable for making \/ female characters who were as round as men.\u201d And so the queens, daughters, lovers, and witches are among the Bard\u2019s go-to stereotypes that Sylvia\u2019s poems resuscitate, providing the women their own stage, by themselves, by name, honoring their distinct human dignities. In poems as formally various as the characters she writes about, Sylvia gives us ghazals and shaped poems, echoing columns, curses, and free verse both felicitous and shapely. This fine poet even performs a shadow-part herself, tracing King Edward\u2019s hidden daughter, who is \u201cnever . . . onstage \/ except in the mouths of those who bid on her.\u201d That daughter? Why, Elizabeth, of course. In providing a humanizing critique of the Bard\u2019s lasting gift, Elizabeth Sylvia makes her own shining work of art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014David Baker, author of Whale Fall<\/em> and Swift: New and Selected Poems<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n With her wonderful first book of poems, Elizabeth Sylvia celebrates in None but Witches<\/em> the teeming population of William Shakespeare\u2019s plays. From the book\u2019s first sentence she clarifies her joyfully critical theme: \u201cI used to believe the men who told me \/ Shakespeare was remarkable for making \/ female characters who were as round as men.\u201d And so the queens, daughters, lovers, and witches are among the Bard\u2019s go-to stereotypes that Sylvia\u2019s poems resuscitate, providing the women their own stage, by themselves, by name, honoring their distinct human dignities. In poems as formally various as the characters she writes about, Sylvia gives us ghazals and shaped poems, echoing columns, curses, and free verse both felicitous and shapely. This fine poet even performs a shadow-part herself, tracing King Edward\u2019s hidden daughter, who is \u201cnever . . . onstage \/ except in the mouths of those who bid on her.\u201d That daughter? Why, Elizabeth, of course. In providing a humanizing critique of the Bard\u2019s lasting gift, Elizabeth Sylvia makes her own shining work of art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014David Baker, author of Whale Fall<\/em> and Swift: New and Selected Poems<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014Cindy Veach, author of Her Kind<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Shakespeare rarely passes the Bechdel test, but in Elizabeth Sylvia\u2019s brilliant debut, the women get the last word\u2014sometimes a laugh, sometimes a guttural scream as they insist they are more than \u201ca pair of tits attached to broken, \/ a hurt circuit flipped again and again.\u201d The intelligence of the female characters is of little consequence in the plays, Sylvia laments, because \u201cAll they do is orbit, casting here and there \/ reflected light\u201d on \u201ca man\u2019s path.\u201d In None But Witches<\/em>, women\u2019s voices blaze. These poems hold \u201ca little shiv in their mouths\u201d\u2014\u201ca little razor blade for later\u201d\u2014and any one of them could cut you open. Which is just what you want a poem to do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 Josephine Yu, author of Prayer Book for the Anxious<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n ***<\/span><\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Publication Date: June 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n ISBN: 9780998340661<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pages: 89<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trade paperback: 6 x 9<\/p>\n\n\n\n None But Witches, Elizabeth Sylvia, $16.00ADD TO CART<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n