Emilie Menzel

Sara Verstynen
 

‘In giving yourself many rabbits, you gift yourself a kindness. Do not worry about how to justify the fables,’ writes Menzel in her tremendous, book-length lyric. Menzel pushes the boundaries of what poetry and prose can be and how language creates meaning, offering, ‘it is a skill to grow gaps…my voice discovered / through…the history of a feeling.’ Through fables, dissections, and precise and mysterious descriptions, Menzel tracks the history of said feeling, weaving in and out of points of view, around anchors of repetition, and into small turns that open into quietly sweeping movements. This is a tale that speaks of hauntings and grief and the ways a person might rewrite the rules of knowing the body, memory, and experience. Despite the serious tenor, there is also a playful daring that may be both strange and aspirational for anyone attempting to reconstruct, via language, disparate pieces of a whole. A question is posed, ‘how do you gather language for a concept you do not yet know how to see?’ Menzel begins to show us.

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Judge's Citation for 2023 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize; Author of Places I've Taken My Body
 

"The world of The Girl Who Became a Rabbit is at once fabular and unflinchingly ours. And, in it, the body is at once a wilderness and a refuge, a site of grief and violence and a territory of fantastic transformation. It is telling you a story. It is also probing—again and again—what telling a story does.  I fell into this world of this book—its rabbits, and soft deer, sliced cow-eyes and wolves— the way you wade into a cold body of water, slowly and then all at once. I couldn’t put it down. And, when I finished, I was changed."

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Review
 

"Menzel’s ability to navigate themes of trauma, grief, and alienation through such lush, lyric language is nothing short of brilliant. The Girl Who Became a Rabbit leaves an indelible mark, raising profound questions about the limits and possibilities of the body."

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Adam Vitcavage
 

"An exquisite book-length poem that is full of fancy and thought-provoking prose. Every page is a masterclass in language. Reading this was an experience unlike any other. I need more books like Menzel’s The Girl Who Became a Rabbit."

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Gina Thayer
 

"The Girl Who Became a Rabbit is a reminder that amidst our grief, our light, our hybridity, we are constantly being formed anew. We are all of us trembling. How terrifying. How beautiful."

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Author of The Book of Love
 

"A delectably nimble collection, ranging in scope from the ordinary to the divine—and all points between. Emilie Menzel is a marvelous writer and cataloguer of what connects and estranges us from our lives."

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Author of Ghost Of and Root Fractures
 

"In this astonishing debut, Emilie Menzel employs logic as a poetics of longing and grief, a vital instrument untangling trauma and its aftermath. Her images are both seductive and unflinching, electrifying and terrifying. Her lyric is the elixir I wish I  could gift anyone who’s experienced girlhood."

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Author of Tolstoy Killed Anna Karenina
 

"If what you wish is to be for a while in a world that will inspire you to think playfully and with kindness and persistence and an openness to that which is not immediately beheld, you have found your book and your invitation to enter another world that happens to be in this one. Menzel works magic. I love this book."

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