Notes to the Beloved

Poetry. NOTES TO THE BELOVED is full of the physical world, illuminated by a dynamic narrative sensibility, a vision of down-to-earth love, an active yearning to understand the world, and plenty of kick-ass images, metaphors, and similes: "You make a matchstick of your finger, / dunk the tip in Bombshell Red. / Then your lips are two flickers, / in the shadows of your ears, smoldering / flowers. You draw a smoky line / between lid and lash and dash out."

Michelle Bitting's first collection, GOOD FRIDAY KISS (C&R, 2008) won the DeNovo First Book Award. Her second collection, Notes To The Beloved (SPC, 2011) won the Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award and received a starred review from Kirkus. Her newest collections are THE COUPLE WHO FELL TO EARTH (C&R Press, 2016) and NOTES TO THE BELOVED (C&R Press, 2017). Poems have been published in the American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Narrative, The L.A. Weekly, diode, Linebreak, and The Paris-American, and have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University and is currently a PhD candidate in Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She grew up in Los Angeles near the ocean.