Out of Love in Spring

"Hailey Spencer's intense, intimate poems announce the arrival of a powerful new voice on the poetry scene. With the clarity of a wordsmith, the ear of a musician, and the feelings of a heart boiling over with passion, Spencer traces the pilgrimage of love from desperation to resignation. In this tightly integrated collection one biting poem to the next thrills the reader with unforgettable images woven together with subtle rhyme: "Last night we unzipped our skin. / I thought it'd be a relief to be human again / But to my surprise, I found / that I missed the smell of smoke / from the villages I left burning in my wake." Spencer's voice is relentless as she drills into the dangers of love. Read these wonderful poems at your peril-and your delight."

-Sharon Cumberland, author of Strange With Age.

"I often worry that I am unable to tell the difference between the brilliant and the abysmal in poetry. Then I see something like this and it reassures me that I can tell when something is good."

-Catherine Potter, editor, Red Ogre Review

"Hailey Spencer's Out of Love in Spring takes the reader on a pilgrimage, along the pathways of a story that is both universal and deeply personal-the falling into and out of love: both source and abyss. The short epigraph-like pieces introducing each of the chapbook's four parts haunt like Sappho's fragments, a fitting echo for poems unafraid to leap headlong into passion's turbulence."

-Laura J. Braverman, author of Salt Water

Hailey Spencer is, in the words of her wife Elizabeth, an absolute cloud of a girl. She is obsessed with fairy tales and has an equally passionate rivalry with ants. She lives and writes in Seattle. For more on Hailey and her work, visit haileyspencerwrites.com