In the Wake

The poems in this stunning first collection reveal Shenan Prestwich's finely honed skills in crafting tight narratives that use imagery to build suspense and that deliver unexpected revelations about love and loss, longing and desire, memory and its intersection with the present. Her use of formal poetic conventions buttresses in unexpected ways her finely tuned voice with its occasional use of the colloquial diction of her native Shenandoah valley and the apple-rich Virginia...
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The poems in this stunning first collection reveal Shenan Prestwich's finely honed skills in crafting tight narratives that use imagery to build suspense and that deliver unexpected revelations about love and loss, longing and desire, memory and its intersection with the present. Her use of formal poetic conventions buttresses in unexpected ways her finely tuned voice with its occasional use of the colloquial diction of her native Shenandoah valley and the apple-rich Virginia countryside. Blending lyricism with the best techniques of story-telling, Prestwich delivers poems that leave the reader dazzled and wanting more.
-Ed Perlman, Publisher and Senior Editor, Entasis Press
Shenan Prestwich's impressive debut collection, In the Wake, requires the instruction she uses as the title of one of her poems: 'Peel Slowly and See.' As Prestwich ties the multiple definitions of 'wake' with her poems-including two of my favorite journeying poems of all time, 'Laces' and 'There Are Places I Should Never Know,' as well as the haunting epic 'The Undertaking' -she uses both vivid imagery and her formalist style to awaken both the senses and the soul.
-Kelly Ann Jacobson, author of Cairo in White
In her debut collection, In the Wake, Shenan Prestwich examines the smooth and sharp edges of cause and effect much in the way a person might consider a stone before skipping it across the surface of a pond before meditating on the resulting ripples. 'A hunt dog hunts; it's not / his place to run,' notes Prestwich, who likewise approaches her material with a craftsman's care and an unrelenting focus. A hint of Robert Frost graces 'The Undertaking' and echoes of Marie Howe can be heard in "In My Wake," but the voice is authentically Prestwich's own. These are poems to be savored, poems very much - in the poet's words - 'alive with both life's sweetness and tart pith.
-Ann Eichler Kolakowski, author of Persistence: Poems of Warren, Maryland