Customer Reviews

My Life as a Doll (The Autumn House Poetry Series)

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Elizabeth Kirschner's book, My Life as a Doll, is more than a collection of poems. It's a memoir in verse. A story of memory and recovery. A monologue of those most internal thoughts, brought about in story form, in poetic verse, in a list of violations set upon the narrator by her mother and others. This book is shocking and good. Through all the pain and vulnerability pulses a ferocity and rage that keeps both the narrative and the reader alive and hungry for survival and dignity.

Bravely and beautifully written, Elizabeth Kirschner's "My Life as a Doll" tears, not tugs, the heartstrings. Her poetry is vivid and violently truthful. The rawness of her work creates an open wound, which she tends, reconstructing strength from the healing flesh of her voice. Halfway through the book, I stopped reading, and, instead, began to feel these poems. I glimpsed the horror and pain they relate, while relishing the triumph that comes with the knowledge that these words exist, that the author could write them. "My Life as a Doll" is the reconciliation between two emotional and physical extremes: the injury and the inspiring recovery.