“In a time when the stories we look to define us, to blast our paths forward with light, are stolen, rearranged and revised without our permission, we desperately need what Liz Burk offers—an indomitable city girl’s wily romp through yesterday’s good and not so good, the savvy musings of a woman charmed and confounded by the widening world, and a lyrical take on what stays right and what goes wrong as we age. Unmoored, by the way, is no such thing—this unforgettable work is rooted in love, loss, heartbreak, wonder and revelation.”
—Patricia Smith, author of Unshuttered
“Elizabeth Burk’s Unmoored pulls the reader into a life lived large and deeply. ‘I did float once on the Dead Sea,/my legs straight up in the air,’ she attests, a self-described ‘aging Snow White kissed/by remorse and an itch for more.’ From New York City childhood to Parisian adventures to later-life Louisiana love match, Burk’s signature mix of energy, humor, and wisdom urges the reader to ‘Suck/the spicy meat and rice mixture from its casing’ (‘How to Visit Cajun Country’). Unmoored is both existentially serious and massively entertaining.”
—Suzanne Cleary, author of Crude Angel
“As often as I’ve heard the term ‘whirlwind’ used to describe a book, you’d think I’d have been caught up in more than a few of those gusts over the years. Truth is, though, I can’t remember the last time I’ve been as swept away by a book of poetry as I was by Elizabeth Burk’s new collection, Unmoored. These poems whisk us from the Northeast to Europe and back to Louisiana, and they transport us from childhood to gray hair in a breath. Burk’s lines are as sharp as any nun’s reproaching glance, as rich as any home-cooked meal, and as fluid as fingers hovering over a piano keyboard practicing Chopin. Line by line, Burk puts the knife in our hands to chop onions, she opens a favorite book to its best page and lets us read Marx with her father’s eyes, and poem after poem her words pop like a rifle’s retort. With writing this exquisite, it’s impossible not to be drawn into these poems’ memories and blown away.”
—Jack B. Bedell, author of Against the Woods’ Dark Trunks, Poet Laureate of Louisiana, 2017-2019
“Elizabeth Burk’s Unmoored invites us to ask of ourselves and of one another–how did we get so close? / how did we dare? With sumptuous, precise images and language, these poems ask questions that do not insist on definitive answers, likening the human experience of love, memory and aging to an accident in slow motion. From the searing rooftops of youth to the crisp country house of one’s later years, from dripping tomatoes to turtles climbing toward the peak, and from young, boundless love to sustained love which grounds us, in Unmoored we find ourselves asking is there time, is there time?”
—Joan Kwon Glass, author of Night Swim
“Over the course of an emotionally adventurous life, our heroine moves through landscapes urban, suburban, and wild, but the real journey is a journey of the heart. Unmoored reminds us that careful attention to autobiography must include politics, philosophy, biology, spirituality. In one of the book’s poised lyrics, Snow White looks in the mirror and asks ‘Is that a strand of gray you see? / What does the mirror say, if not that you are not what you seem to be, not what /you think?’ Another poem replies: ‘Is there time, is there time?’ Elizabeth Burk is fearless and witty enough to turn those questions on herself and demonstrate that after realization comes wisdom, joy, love.”
—Kathleen Ossip, author of July
“In her delicious poetry collection, Unmoored, Liz Burk invites us to join her as she revisits the European coming of age period of her life, explores the world of the enigmatic Louisiana bayou country, and finally awakens to the self-realizing wonder and liberation of impermanence.
And it was all for the fun of it!
:...with the waning stretch of life you have left,
where you find yourself awakened.
...but your mind remains a spinning top, shining
into dark corners, squinting in bright light’
What will you do?”
—Michael Doucet, Ph.D., composer/musician, Cajun lyricist
“Elizabeth Burk’s voice rings clear and genuine as she explores the heart and body’s deepest rooms. I admire the courage and lyricism the poems in Unmoored exhibit while probing the longing and ambivalence of both place and age.”
—Sheryl St. Germain, author of 50 Miles
