SurvivalEye - Paperback

by Mare Heron Hake (Author)

These are fierce poems of buckle up and hold on and no turning back. There's an "asphalt instinct" here that speaks of grit and a hard-earned resilience. Even as she writes powerfully of family trauma and empowerment in a way that puts me in mind of Lucille Clifton, Hake keeps reaching toward the more-than-human for what exactly it is to be alive and feeling oneself in the thrum of the living world.
-Derek Sheffield, author of Not for Luck, Winner of the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize

With the unapologetic honesty of Sally Mann and the harrowing surrealism of Joel-Peter Witkin, the poems of Mare Heron Hake aptly frame the shifting tectonics of mental illness within an exterior landscape where the sun is a blast furnace, its sky dark with crows or "less bluebird and more blaze." The mind is a betrayer; the body is a betrayer. Through invocations mostly in the form of prose poems, the poet's muses are prehistoric: the dinosaur because dinos "don't need mottos," the Earth's infancy when "I am the magma I feel and I am always erupting," and the fossil record of survival.
-Allen Braden, author of A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood and Elegy in the Passive Voice

Employing a disarmingly hectic tempo -- as though we were enmeshed in a suspense novel, somehow rendered as poems--SurvivalEye tells a story in fragments about persistence, pain and vitality. All this is recounted from the morphing perspective of a poetic persona who is part Snow White, part Godzilla and part Enterprise crew member, as well as part T-Rex, dominatrix boss, and desperate driver. The reader careens from roadways to parking lots, to backyards to hospitals. We inhabit the complex interior of a Converse sneaker and contemplate the depression of a fogged over bridge. Covid enters the scene, not as a disease, but as a new way to shape personality. Now literally masked, the poet navigates in circles, welcomes a silent delivery person, becomes Icarus before the fall, and burns the words down. This is a wild ride that-like the driver at the beginning of this collection-continually swerves and continually surprises the reader with fresh language and unique insight.
-Stephanie Barbé Hammer, How Formal? and Rescue Plan

This stunning collection by poet, Mare Heron Hake investigates what is asked of us in life, and how we respond. The rich title poem, SurvivalEye serves as a guide, and along with the other poems speaks to what we all seek to understand. How does a mother view her own aging and her role as caregiver? How does our world imagine and treat those who are suffering from mental illness? We are blown to smithereens with the knowledge Hake imparts in poems such as "What Did I Know," "Schizophrenia Row" and "One in Three Beds Dedicated." Heartbreak, loss and survival are at the core of this collection and Hake's strength lies in her ability to write the unspeakable with lush, precise and searing language. A gorgeous read, one you won't want to put down until you hit the last page.
-Carla Sameth, author, One Day on the Gold Line: A Memoir in Essays

In poems about motherhood, neglect, mental illness, dinosaurs, and a beloved dog, SurvivalEye is about more than simply surviving what is meant to break us. Hake recognizes that pain, in its contradictory way, is wedded to tenderness and joy. These poems surprise with humor; they sing with a keen ear. SurvivalEye is a book that affirms the physicality of life and looks without flinching at what it means "to be the / dessert for sweets sake, to be resurrected before the plague."
-Jessica Cuello, author of LIAR (Barrow Street 2021) and Yours, Creature (JackLeg Press, 2022)