Rebecca Evans’s Tangled by Blood is a harrowing and lyrical excavation of a childhood defined by the unthinkable and a womanhood forged in the aftermath of that wreckage. This memoir in verse refuses the comfort of a linear timeline, instead pulsing between the visceral memories of a five-year-old girl and the reflective, often weary perspective of the mother she eventually became. It’s a collection that maps the topography of trauma, from the immediate betrayal of a stepfather’s abuse to the more enduring, complex ache of a mother’s enabling silence. Through these poems, Evans navigates the “sacred wound” shared with her sister, Tina, while documenting a fierce, ongoing struggle to reclaim a body that was once treated as a mere object of another’s hunger.

I found myself deeply moved by the way Evans utilizes the shifting voices of her past, particularly when she addresses her sister or adopts the persona of her own younger self, “Beckala”. There’s a devastating precision in the poem “Arithmetic,” where the triumph of winning a school spelling bee is instantly curdled by her mother’s anger, not over the success, but because the daughter dared to tell a doctor the truth about who “damaged” her. The writing here is sharp and unflinching, yet it’s often draped in a fragile beauty that makes the subject matter even more startling. I was struck by the recurring imagery of “buttered corn breath” and “tiny fire-fly caresses,” small, sensory anchors of love that manage to persist even within an environment of profound neglect.

What resonates most for me is the book’s complex relationship with the idea of “mothering.” Evans explores the paradox of learning to nurture her own three sons while having been so poorly mothered herself. Her “Non-Standard Parenting Plan” is a masterpiece of resilience, detailing the exhaustion of building a safe world from the “discarded seeds” of her own fractured history. It isn’t just a story about surviving violence; it’s a nuanced look at the labor involved in breaking a generational cycle. The poems don’t offer easy forgiveness or a clean resolution. Instead, they offer “tzedakah,” “incensed cinnamon,” and a “weighted blanket” to hold the narrator down so she doesn’t “roam too soon” toward the sky. It’s a beautiful, difficult alchemy of turning bone and biofilm into something akin to hope.

Tangled by Blood is an emotionally stirring book that asks that we look closely at the scars we usually try to hide. Evans has created a work that is both a confession and a cathedral, built from the very stones where she once fell. Her voice is a superpower, one that transforms the “unspoken” into a necessary, howling song of survival. This book is a great choice for anyone interested in the intersection of poetry and trauma, particularly readers who appreciate memoirs that prioritize emotional truth over simple narrative.

Pages: 96 | ISBN: 1957799080