I Was the Jukebox: Poems - Hardcover

"These poems are fresh, crisp, and muscular. They are decisive and fearless. Every object, icon, or historical moment has a soul with a voice. In these poems these soulful ones elbow their way to the surface of the page, smartly into the contemporary now."-Joy Harjo, prize citation from "The Piano Speaks" For an hour I forgot my fat self, my neurotic innards, my addiction to alignment. For an hour I forgot my fear of rain. For an hour I was a salamander shimmying through the kelp in search of shore, and under his fingers the notes slid loose from my belly in a long jellyrope of eggs that took root in the mud.

Sandra Beasley is the author of I Was the Jukebox, winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Theories of Falling, winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize, as well as the memoir Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life. She received a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She serves on the faculty with the low-residency MFA program at the University of Tampa, and lives in Washington, DC.