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My Heart Is a Rose Manhattan is a darkly humorous book about grief and isolation. Cutting yet tender, sorrowful yet angry, these poems touch on death and loss, architecture, alcohol, horse statues, and catalogues of life.
About the author
Nikki Reimer writes poetry, non-fiction, and criticism, organizes in the community, yells on the internet, and makes digital art. Her first book of poetry,
[sic] (Frontenac House, 2010), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She has published three chapbooks:
that stays news (Nomados Press, 2011),
haute action material (Heavy Industries, 2011), and
fist things first (Wrinkle Press, 2009). Her work has also been shortlisted for the Lit POP Award and the PRISM International Creative Non-Fiction Contest. She is a member of the Writer's Guild of Alberta and a founding co-director of the Chris Reimer Legacy Fund Society.
Summary
My Heart is a Rose Manhattan is a darkly humorous book about grief and isolation. The poems are cutting yet tender; sorrowful yet filled with righteous anger, absurdist at times but still recognizable, reassuring us that “it’s ok to grieve forever.” There is death and loss, architecture, alcohol, horse statues, and catalogues of life away from the urban centres of Canada. This book wants to “subvert the literary industrial complex,” but also crash in like the Kool-Aid meme with all-caps non sequiturs and “overdrawn affluenza.” These poems are addicted to social media and simultaneously well versed in feminist theory. Some of the poems rail against the abuses of rape culture, asking: What is excusable? Who is implicated? Who is believed?
