Praise for How We Bury Our Dead
"In How We Bury Our Dead, Faith Garbin's lush poems are an uncompromising encounter with how "the silver scissors of madness and fate cut up all of our dreams." In embracing existence that is fragile as a shell, Garbin continues to display strength needed for a person to continue going through daily tasks in spite of painful family encounters and loss that threaten to overcome and strangle like morning glory that is not uprooted. Ultimately Garbin comes to terms with the knowledge that each person is left alone with their need, their desire at the moment of death. These are not poems that can be sailed out into the night, into the blackness. They will return to boomerang the heart."
--Vivian Shipley, award-winning poet and editor of the Connecticut Review
"Faith Garbin's absorbing poems look squarely at catastrophe and find the poetry in that word. Among their countless discoveries: how hours of vigil expose meaning - in ashes on a coat cuff, a joke's missing punch line, an exploding coffee pot. The loss of a husband becomes the art of "unsharing a double bed." How brilliantly Garbin understands our position: claimed by sureties of death, of life, while "a crescent moon hangs in the balance."
--Angela Ball, Professor of English, Center for Writers, University of Southern Mississippi
"How many ways do we lose people, innocence, ourselves? How We Bury Our Dead is a collection of well-crafted poems that stares unblinking into loss, grief, and the ensuing chaos and entropy. The poems are the survival technique, employing courage, vulnerability and humor to build meaning from loss."
--Mary Ann Avallone-O'Gorman, Mississippi poet and author of Life in This House
"The breadth of this book of poetry is large. Readers are invited into a family history that takes place on the bodies of its members. The subject matter ranges from child abuse to self-mutilation, and poems are both paintings and testaments to survival. They are like badges, and anchors, as well, and the reader hangs onto them as they take us through the lives of those whose stories they tell."
--Geri Lipschultz, Foley Award nominee and Heekin semi-finalist
“'Ghosts sift through their mangled pasts/while hope sits quietly on the curb,' writes Faith Garbin. In her debut collection, Garbin accounts for these ghosts, their failings, their losses. And in doing so, she gives us an account of the human heart desperately seeking the balm of time, offers us yet another opportunity to open our eyes and turn our gaze toward the difficult circumstances we’d rather leave unacknowledged. Only a writer with an unflinching hand and a well of patience could shine such a light on the dark corners of life without resorting to exaggeration or judgment. The achingly beautiful poems in How We Bury Our Dead remind us of what it means to be alive in a messy and fallen world. A fearless and darkly beautiful book from a poet we’re sure to hear more from."
--Terry L. Kennedy, author of New River Breakdown
"More than 30 years ago Faith (Hawks) Garbin, while a student in my Virginia Tech fiction workshop, won the Hollins College Literary Festival with a short story that one of my colleagues called “the scariest thing I’ve ever read.” Now, all these years later, How We Bury Our Dead proves that Faith Garbin is adept at poetry as well, with a debut collection that is scary in its frankness. Each taut poem cuts to the bone and leaves us wondering—what will Faith Garbin write next?"
--Claude Clayton Smith, co-editor/translator of MEDITATIONS After the Bear Feast: The Poetic Dialogues of N. Scott Momaday and Yuri Vaella
"In How We Bury Our Dead, Faith Garbin's lush poems are an uncompromising encounter with how "the silver scissors of madness and fate cut up all of our dreams." In embracing existence that is fragile as a shell, Garbin continues to display strength needed for a person to continue going through daily tasks in spite of painful family encounters and loss that threaten to overcome and strangle like morning glory that is not uprooted. Ultimately Garbin comes to terms with the knowledge that each person is left alone with their need, their desire at the moment of death. These are not poems that can be sailed out into the night, into the blackness. They will return to boomerang the heart."
--Vivian Shipley, award-winning poet and editor of the Connecticut Review
"Faith Garbin's absorbing poems look squarely at catastrophe and find the poetry in that word. Among their countless discoveries: how hours of vigil expose meaning - in ashes on a coat cuff, a joke's missing punch line, an exploding coffee pot. The loss of a husband becomes the art of "unsharing a double bed." How brilliantly Garbin understands our position: claimed by sureties of death, of life, while "a crescent moon hangs in the balance."
--Angela Ball, Professor of English, Center for Writers, University of Southern Mississippi
"How many ways do we lose people, innocence, ourselves? How We Bury Our Dead is a collection of well-crafted poems that stares unblinking into loss, grief, and the ensuing chaos and entropy. The poems are the survival technique, employing courage, vulnerability and humor to build meaning from loss."
--Mary Ann Avallone-O'Gorman, Mississippi poet and author of Life in This House
"The breadth of this book of poetry is large. Readers are invited into a family history that takes place on the bodies of its members. The subject matter ranges from child abuse to self-mutilation, and poems are both paintings and testaments to survival. They are like badges, and anchors, as well, and the reader hangs onto them as they take us through the lives of those whose stories they tell."
--Geri Lipschultz, Foley Award nominee and Heekin semi-finalist
“'Ghosts sift through their mangled pasts/while hope sits quietly on the curb,' writes Faith Garbin. In her debut collection, Garbin accounts for these ghosts, their failings, their losses. And in doing so, she gives us an account of the human heart desperately seeking the balm of time, offers us yet another opportunity to open our eyes and turn our gaze toward the difficult circumstances we’d rather leave unacknowledged. Only a writer with an unflinching hand and a well of patience could shine such a light on the dark corners of life without resorting to exaggeration or judgment. The achingly beautiful poems in How We Bury Our Dead remind us of what it means to be alive in a messy and fallen world. A fearless and darkly beautiful book from a poet we’re sure to hear more from."
--Terry L. Kennedy, author of New River Breakdown
"More than 30 years ago Faith (Hawks) Garbin, while a student in my Virginia Tech fiction workshop, won the Hollins College Literary Festival with a short story that one of my colleagues called “the scariest thing I’ve ever read.” Now, all these years later, How We Bury Our Dead proves that Faith Garbin is adept at poetry as well, with a debut collection that is scary in its frankness. Each taut poem cuts to the bone and leaves us wondering—what will Faith Garbin write next?"
--Claude Clayton Smith, co-editor/translator of MEDITATIONS After the Bear Feast: The Poetic Dialogues of N. Scott Momaday and Yuri Vaella