Hex & Howl

Like heroines harrowing Hell, Simone Muench and Jackie White rock and reel in these scintillating collaborative sonnets and portraits, resurrecting the girls buried in the woods and garden of misogynist brutality, refracting ruin through ingenious sequences of sense and sound. Wielding needle and shovel, scalpel and gavel, Muench and White “ churn those ashed hours into aurora,” stretching the sonnet’ s corset into glorious trumpet, “ spinning loose from that pinned darkness” into incantatory song after song— each line a rivet, sorrowful and resplendent, fiery curse and wise dirge— giving voice and ear to those who were not heard, in searing soaring stereo.— Anna Maria Hong