Girl Hurt
E.J. Miller Laino
1996 American Book Award
“Miller-Laino’s voice is vibrant and compelling in these intimate poems about family, work, and the hard road from silence into language.” "E.J. Miller Laino is a tough, honest poet. She is liable to say
anything. Her poems are startling, from their frank treatment of sex and death to the
abundance of hard, true metaphors. This is more than a confrontation with daily pain and
fear, however; these poems celebrate survival, the durability of family, the liberation of
unheard voices, especially female and working-class voices. The poems of E.J. Miller Laino
transcend, with all the power and beauty of flight." "Girl Hurt is a vibrant and compelling book, less a "collection" than a spiritual memoir, in which the stature of poetry restores to the word "recovery" its full complexity, depth,
and human resonance. One of the thrills of reading it lies in its balance of virtuosity
and urgency: the reader has a feeling of watching a top notch slalomer skiing for her life
before an avalanche. And outskiing it...how wonderful to be a reader (and a poet) now,
when beautiful and moving poems such as these are written to decline Death's
Invitation to Dance." "The imperative that grounds this urgent and affecting first
collection of poems is from Muriel Rukeyser's "Double Ode": "Pay attention
to what they tell you to forget." In Girl Hurt, E.J. Miller
Laino has paid attention. In poem after poem, she tracks the past, its labyrinth of
influences that shape our lives in the present, and returns to speak the "hard
words" which alone can forge authentic human connections...this is a poetry that cuts
to the quick; and it is a poetry that has the amplitude of feeling necessary to affirm
that while "some things disappear and stay lost forever," some things come back
in the fullness of time." Author photo by Lisa Clark
—Ploughshares
—Martín Espada
—Linda McCarriston
—Robert Cording, author of Heavy Grace
about the author
E.J. Miller Laino, educated at the University of
Massuchusetts and Fitchburg State College, is a prevention specialist working with young
people on the issue of substance abuse. She resides in Winthrop, Massachusetts, with her
husband and two daughters. E.J.'s poetry and prose has appeared in numerous magazines,
including Prarie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review,
Poetry East, Negative Cabability, and Kalliope. In 1991 she was nominated
for the Pushcart Award. Girl Hurt won the 1996 American Book
Award.
