Praise for These Domestic Incidences:
Lara Adams Gaydos knows that the true work of the poet, no matter how much she may wish otherwise, is to remember, but to do so in such a way that one’s private encounter with trauma speaks to a larger human condition. This book, built out of the author’s experience of having been the “lead story” on the nightly news — after providing refuge to two wounded young children fleeing their deranged father — reminds us all how our worlds can be turned upside down in a moment we “thought was so safe.” But These Domestic Incidences is more than just an instruction manual on how to live with the after-shock of trauma, It is an exploration of memory and how memory “secures the scene,” how the poet’s craft — that attention and care words ask of the poet and her readers — can extend and deepen our sensibilities so that we might live in difficult times.
~ Dr. Christopher Bursk, author of Places of Comfort, Places of Justice
These Domestic Incidences is a stunning and sometimes brutally honest look at violence: Every so often, you see in the local news / a troubling story of how someone got too close / to a den, or somehow provoked a lethal predator / you didn’t even know lived right here / in this place you thought was so safe. The poems tell the story of those who survive after a traumatic event and how they attempt to live life adjusting to that trauma — how echoes of trauma fold into and blend with the littlest things in our daily lives, such as opening gifts or driving down a highway, and how long those echoes of even the good kind of screams can last.
~ Leah Maines, best-selling, award-winning author, editor, and actor
Praise for Things That Were Only Briefly the Truth:
Here is a book full of beautiful things – fountains, an antique copy of Paradise Lost, tiger lilies, geraniums, Van Gogh’s wheat fields, dragonflies , the Big Dipper– but notice the title, Things That Were Only Briefly the Truth. Lara Adams Gaydos is a poet that understands impermanence, and the menace found in the smallest of events, a child’s loose tooth, or in the largest, North Korea’s nuclear testing. “My dryer could catch fire any moment,” Gaydos writes in the ironically titled “Good Housekeeping.” But though schooled by loss from an early age and recognizing that “some shadows are best left alone,” Gaydos returns us again and again to the transcendent, the capacity to expect magic from this world: “My daughters stretch themselves out/across the shadowy lawn, certain/that this time when they reach/for the ladle/it will dip just enough/ and they’ll drink ice cold milk/straight from the sky.” Here is a poet who satisfies an old and sacred thirst in us.
~ Dr. Christopher Bursk, author of The Improbable Swervings of Atoms
Lara’s ability to bring us front and center is one of her great strengths. Her poetry moves effortlessly from past to present, fielding emotions of humor, anger and grief. Her readers may find themselves laughing aloud at one moment or sympathizing with loss in the next. Lara’s first collection sets a high standard, establishing its own area of being and particular poetic imagination.
~ Lois Beebe Hayna, author of Keeping Still
Lara Adams Gaydos’ welcoming and wise first chapbook offers searing and honest reflections on being a wife, mother, daughter, and sister. Gaydos examines complex and illuminating personal moments, exploring life’s tenderness and care, but also its messiness and difficult emotions, presenting her relationships as works-in-progress. In poem after poem in her book, Gaydos deftly explores the bravery of “staring up into the darkness.” The reader will relish this exploration in Things That Were Only Briefly the Truth—a book that introduces a writer of depth, generosity, and truth.
~ Marie Kane, author of Survivors in the Garden