Complications of the Heart

"Like a sonogram that sifts 'through layers of tissue and bone' to explore the flawed heart of an unborn child, the poems in this brilliant collection by Nancy Naomi Carlson give us 'different views—cross-sectional maps' of the complicated human hearty with its 'twitching desires' and trace the choices we make to negotiate our way through that difficult terrain. Carlson's language is gracefully seductive as she guides us to destinations exotic and erotic. With its deft formal control, immense charm and wisdom, Complications of the Heart is that rarity:  a work that yields greater delight with each rereading."
—Richard Foerster, Final Judge

"Offering up sensuous language, which is sometimes memorably formal and always musical, Nancy Naomi Carlson manages an eerie, provocative blend of poems about the different bodies of love a woman may inhabit. When she writes in 'Sari-Covered Nights' that 'My five mouths roll their uvulas, / guttural as high winds crossing desert dunes,' she speaks not only of the multiple lives we must recognize in ourselves, but also of the poet's need and obligation to render many possibilities at once."
—Stephen Corey