Margaret Ray is pulling back the curtains on our societal performance of culture, guiding an exposing light to the daily performance that is life in a woman’s body.

Selected by Stephanie Burt as the winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize, Ray’s Good Grief, the Ground interrogates the everyday violences nonchalantly inflicted unto women through personal, political, and national lenses. Moving between adolescence and adulthood, Ray alternates between dark humor and heart-wrenching honesty to explore grief, anxiety, queer longing, girlhood, escape from an abusive relationship, and the dangers of lending language to a thing.  With stunning wit and precision and attention, we see Ray show us what it is to be human: the mess of tenderness and darkness and animosity. 

Out of the heavy Florida dusk, out of peach juice and late-night swimming pool break-ins and glances across grocery store aisles come these completely captivating poems. In the words of Stephanie Burt: “Come and see. Take care. Dive in.”