Bianca

"e;I thought I forgave you,"e; Eugenia Leigh tells the specter of her father in Bianca. "e;Then I took root and became / someone's mother."e; Leigh's gripping second collection introduces us to a woman managing marriage, motherhood, and mental illness as her childhood abuse resurfaces in the light of "e;this honeyed life."e; Leigh strives to reconcile the disconnect between her past and her present as she confronts the inherited violence mired in the body's history. As she "e;choose[s] to be tender to [her] child-a choice / [her] mangled brain makes each day,"e; memories arise, asking the mother in her to tend, also, to the girl she once was. Thus, we meet her manic alter ego, whose history becomes the gospel of Bianca: "e;We all called her Bianca. My fever, my havoc, my tilt."e; These poems recover and reconsider Leigh's girlhood and young adulthood with the added context of PTSD and Bipolar Disorder. They document the labyrinth of a woman breaking free from the cycle of abuse, moving from anger to grief, from self-doubt to self-acceptance. Bianca is ultimately the testimony of one woman's daily recommitment to this life. To living. "e;I expected to die much younger than I am now,"e; Leigh writes, in awe of the strangeness of now, of "e;every quiet and colossal joy."e;