Pulse

"From the first poem in Melissa Fadul's remarkable Pulse, where a tattoo needle speaks of its shattering past during the Holocaust, to poems that express the way assault and lesbian desire commingled in memory, these poems are searing in their honesty about what it is to live fully in the truth of being a queer Jewish woman in America today. This is a brave book that risks everything to do as Adrienne Rich asserted: "When a woman tells the truth, she is creating the possibility for more truth around her." And the truth Fadul tells, in poems crafted and profound and at times tender, speaks to all of us. What an audacious and brilliant debut!" -Sharon Dolin, author of Imperfect Present

"Poet Melissa Fadul writes from a deeply witnessed perspective that evokes the very soul of childhood in her debut collection Pulse. Alongside masterful poetic-storytelling. Fadul weaves her witness of private histories and truth, whilst shaping words and phrases of incomparable beauty that pour into a mesmerizing story of love, pain, memory, and ultimately the miracle of survival. Her intensely alive, lyrical, and fearless writing is electric with prescient urgency, wavering between sorrow and joy whilst retaining a hypnotic heart." -Candice Louisa Daquin, author of Tainted by the Same Counterfeit

"Melissa Fadul's debut collection Pulse is a deeply moving exploration of girlhood, gender, sex, and social justice. In poems that both elegize and celebrate, Fadul bears witness to histories of violence, from the Holocaust to Stonewall to the murder of Matthew Shepard to the struggles of high school students in the speaker's New York City classrooms. Pulse is a book of historical reckoning and personal experience-a beautiful, urgent collection." -Nicole Cooley