Nothing but the Blood
Apol, L. (2018). Nothing but the blood. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press
This collection is made up of poems that explore the evolution of belief, living in the body, daughter-mother and mother-daughter interactions, the celebration and failure of a long-term relationship, and the loss of friends and colleagues. Coming as they do at mid-life, the poems understand, appreciate, and often push back against the weight of both history and expectation.
Winner, 2019 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry
Silver Medal, 2019 Independent Publisher Award
Finalist, 2019 Annual Midwest Book Award
As a whole, Nothing but the Blood might be called a “coming of (middle) age” book—or perhaps a sort of recovery narrative. Will the second half of this woman’s life be different from the first? Will she be saved from “the splintered past” and the “rage” of the present? We want to think she will, and the beautiful poems at the book’s close are reassuring.
—Joyce Sutphen, Minnesota State Poet Laureate
Laura Apol looks clear-eyed at her own life as a daughter, mother, friend, lover—a woman who has lost much and cherishes much. In these taut, spare, assured poems she struggles magnificently with the extravagance of grief.
—Joseph Featherstone, Professor of Education Emeritus at Michigan State University and author of Brace’s Cove
Laura Apol promises “Nothing but…” in her new collection, but it isn’t so. She has created a whole universe of family, seasons, decay, time, and rebirth in each one of these poems. And what the poems offer as a collection is more still. This book is for anyone who’s ever had a home and still wondered what home is. The arc of this collection bends toward an infinity of love and loss. Wise and comforting. Nothing but, indeed.
—Kimberly Dark, author of Love and Errors
Laura Apol’s Nothing but the Blood takes the reader on a journey through what it means to be alive, connected to a particular bloodline and the frailty, wisdom, and wonder of being human.
—Mary E. Weems, author of Ohioana Book Award finalist For(e)closure and An Unmistakable Shade of Red and the Obama Chronicles.
