Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Protection Spell: Poems
    Protection Spell: Poems
    Protection Spell: Poems
    Ebook100 pages51 minutes

    Protection Spell: Poems

    By Jennifer Givhan

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Finalist, 2017 Miller Williams Poetry Prize, edited by Billy Collins

    “A poet of great heart and brave directness.”

    —Billy Collins

    In Protection Spell Jennifer Givhan explores the guilt, sadness, and freedom of relationships: the sticky love that keeps us hanging on for no reason other than love, the inky place that asks us to continue revising and reimagining, tying ourselves to this life and to each other despite the pain (or perhaps because of it). These poems reassemble safe spaces from the fissures cleaving the speaker’s own biracial home and act as witnesses speaking to the racial iniquity of our broader social landscape as well as to the precarious standpoint of a mother-woman of color whose body lies vulnerable to trauma and abuse. From insistent moments of bravery, a collection of poems arises that asks the impossible, like the childhood chant that palliates suffering by demanding nothing less than magical healing: sana sana colita de rana, si no sanas hoy, sanas mañana (the frog who loses his tail is commanded to grow another). In the end, Givhan’s verse offers a place where healing may begin.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Arkansas Press
    Release dateFeb 15, 2017
    ISBN9781610756105
    Protection Spell: Poems
    Author

    Jennifer Givhan

    Jennifer Givhan, a National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices fellow, is a Mexican American writer and activist from the Southwestern desert. She is the author of four full-length poetry collections and her honors include the Frost Place Latinx Scholarship, the New Ohio Review’s Poetry Prize chosen by Tyehimba Jess, and others. She is the author of the novels Trinity Sight, a nominee for the 2019 Reading the West Book Award in Adult Fiction, and Jubilee. Givhan holds a master’s degree in English from California State University Fullerton and an MFA from Warren Wilson College, and she can be found discussing feminist motherhood at JenniferGivhan.com as well as on Facebook and Twitter @JennGivhan.

    Read more from Jennifer Givhan

    Related to Protection Spell

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Magic Touch

      Oct 28, 2020

      The Magic Touch
      4 min read

    • Article

      Devil Asks Why You Would Mouth The Word Pity

      Jul 1, 2022

      even in this abundance of dark? Even in this abundance of dark you have totake the stars on faith. Look: Under today’s dim sky there is a basket.In that basket there is a fish. Come night, you are the animal that will eat the best parts of it. And ye

      1 min read

    • Article

      White Witchery

      Feb 14, 2019

      White Witchery
      11 min read

    • Article

      Ishion Hutchinson

      Jun 8, 2021

      Tremor in his hands. He turns obsoleteleaves edged with thunder since the opening scene.What he sees he reads under croton shade,out in the sun. Restless peninsula,dog-eared, melting off into the blue.The blue breaks white as hallucination,more hagga

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Poet’s Craft

      Jan 1, 2020

      To begin with a definition: A poem is a text structurally constrained by the repetition of any language element(s). The continuum of poetic constraint is extensive, stretching from operations that a reader will find completely imperceptible to overwh

      9 min read

    • Article

      Everyday Magic

      Sep 11, 2019

      Everyday Magic
      8 min read

    • Article

      Spells For Protection

      Mar 27, 2020

      Spells For Protection
      1 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: February 2020

      Feb 3, 2020

      These poems are hymns to a lost daughter. An affirmation. “How briefly the body is a story / where everything matters, // even its name.” The post Must-Read Poetry: February 2020 appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: Winter 2023

      Jan 12, 2023

      Nick Ripatrazone spotlights the best poetry collections of Q1. The post Must-Read Poetry: Winter 2023 appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: December 2017

      Nov 27, 2017

      Poetry won’t make us whole again, but we need a form for our shouts and our cries. The post Must-Read Poetry: December 2017 appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      New Titles

      Dec 12, 2018

      By George Keithley George Braziller, Inc. “The Donner Party is one of the three or four finest book-length American poems ever written.”—Poetry. “Out of the western migration of the 1840s…Keithley has made a lean, taut narrative poem that moves with

      6 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: Summer 2023

      Jun 28, 2023

      Notable new poetry collections from Taylor Byas, Terrance Hayes, Sam Sax and more. The post Must-Read Poetry: Summer 2023 appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: November 2017

      Nov 6, 2017

      Inheriting the War mines that mysterious space, how we pursue the soul of those we love who are torn by war, and how those wounds weather our own hands and hearts. The post Must-Read Poetry: November 2017 appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: September 2018

      Sep 5, 2018

      Here are seven notable books of poetry publishing in September. Like by A.E. Stallings Stallings has described the “strange dream-logic connections of the rhymes themselves that lead the poem forward, perhaps into territory the poet herself had not i

      7 min read

    • Article

      Indies Recommend: 10 Small Press Books You Should Read Right Now

      Feb 24, 2017

      As the nation’s only non-profit distributor, Small Press Distribution is dedicated to getting small press literature to the people who want to read it. As such, we’re grateful to our main customers—indie bookstores—the outward-facing purveyors who pr

      3 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: July 2017

      Jul 24, 2017

      2017 is a banner year for poetry: debuts, new takes by established authors, and collections that span careers. The post Must-Read Poetry: July 2017 appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Rewiring The Gendered Gaze

      May 1, 2019

      AP2 Books Chelsey Minnis, Baby I Don’t CarePaperback, 272 pagesWave Books, 2018 Khadijah Queen, I’m So Fine: A List of FamousMen & What I Had OnPaperback, 96 pagesYesYes Books, 2017 Carmen Gimenez Smith, Cruel FuturesPaperback, 88 pagesCity Lights Sp

      6 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: September 2017

      Sep 11, 2017

      Isn’t that one of the purest goals of poetry—to justify our breaths? To recognize that we matter? The post Must-Read Poetry: September 2017 appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Protection Spell

    4.5/5

    5 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Protection Spell - Jennifer Givhan

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1