Becoming Ribbons

This stunning debut poetry collection announces the distinctive voice of an emerging American poet. Amber Adams, a veteran of the Army Reserves who was deployed under Operation Iraqi Freedom, writes of the marks left by war in a new and startling way.

BECOMING RIBBONS presents four acts that weave together themes of love, trauma, loss, and grief. Early poems in the collection reflect on Amber's marriage to Marine Bradley Adams and her own upcoming deployment. In evocative, perceptive poems, Amber describes Bradley's injury in Al-Anbar province. The collection explores the way war and trauma changes Amber and Bradley's relationship, and finally grapples with the end of their marriage, Bradley's death by suicide, and the need to memorialize those who have gone.

Amber Adams traces a remarkable emotional landscape from our contemporary social terrain. As of the publication of this volume, America has been at war for over two decades, in which the personal, inexorable aftermath of war has cracked into the lives of many Americans. Readers will see friends, family, loved ones, and themselves in the challenging lyric moments presented in this collection.

"It's a book of love and loss and survival, full of hard-earned wisdom. With lyric beauty and immense skill, BECOMING RIBBONS explores the interior of a profoundly layered wartime experience."--Brian Turner, author of Here, Bullet

"Adams, in this masterful, beautifully-crafted collection, challenges the facades of safety our institutions represent-- marriage, war, freedom, our temporary bodies."--Jenny Molberg, author of Refusal

"No one in recent memory has written out of the military experience with such nuance, such knowledge, and such tenderness as Amber Adams has in this book." --Bin Ramke, author of Earth on Earth

Poetry.

Amber Adams received her MA in Literary Studies from the University of Denver, and her MA in Counseling from Regis University. Her work has appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, Narrative, War Literature and the Arts Journal, Stone Canoe Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in Boulder, CO.