Brock Guthrie

Alligator Woman

Arts & Literature

“What I like most about these poems is the straightforward reckoning with emotion. Armstrong doesn’t couch her feelings in clever evasiveness or metaphor (though herein be many great metaphors!). Again and again, these poems lay bare the speaker’s vulnerability: ‘Today I choose to be an ugly thing. / I want to be worthless to the world’ (‘Ugly’). Fortunately, such vulnerability and raw emotion is anything but ugly in Armstrong’s capable hands. This is a young poet who speaks directly to the concerns of her generation with clarity. Armstrong is someone to keep an eye on.”