AND FOR TOO LONG AFTER
Marrying poetry and memoir, and for too long after tells the story of a woman making peace with her past. The narrative begins with two sisters in a diner, the eldest discovering her first gray hair. The gray hair spurs a series of poems and stories by the narrator, a woman who never expected to see her adult years due to a lifelong battle with mental illness.
Through White's words, we witness trauma resulting from a father's addiction, a mother's explosive temper, and her own sexual trauma. As the threads of the narrative come together, we are left asking, "Can one move beyond a haunted past to embrace a fruitful future?"
Poetry
ISBN: 978-1-950730-09-4
Publication Date: December 31, 2019
Marrying poetry and memoir, and for too long after tells the story of a woman making peace with her past. The narrative begins with two sisters in a diner, the eldest discovering her first gray hair. The gray hair spurs a series of poems and stories by the narrator, a woman who never expected to see her adult years due to a lifelong battle with mental illness.
Through White's words, we witness trauma resulting from a father's addiction, a mother's explosive temper, and her own sexual trauma. As the threads of the narrative come together, we are left asking, "Can one move beyond a haunted past to embrace a fruitful future?"
Poetry
ISBN: 978-1-950730-09-4
Publication Date: December 31, 2019
Marrying poetry and memoir, and for too long after tells the story of a woman making peace with her past. The narrative begins with two sisters in a diner, the eldest discovering her first gray hair. The gray hair spurs a series of poems and stories by the narrator, a woman who never expected to see her adult years due to a lifelong battle with mental illness.
Through White's words, we witness trauma resulting from a father's addiction, a mother's explosive temper, and her own sexual trauma. As the threads of the narrative come together, we are left asking, "Can one move beyond a haunted past to embrace a fruitful future?"
Poetry
ISBN: 978-1-950730-09-4
Publication Date: December 31, 2019
Praise for AND FOR TOO LONG AFTER
A red bird calls, but it is portent of breaking. Or is it talisman? Is it the sound of something that trills inside our chests? In the world of Ellie White's poems, wind-chimes are dismembered and the weights taken out of pendulum clocks. Death sits in the kitchen with a Red Woman. Children fold themselves into paper dolls, wanting to disappear into the furniture or be borne away on a current of wind. Poems are welts that hold the memory of what happened there. But perhaps they might also be seen as experiments in the making of "[e]very movement, every breath, [as] an act of trust."
Luisa A. Igloria, author of The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis and Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser
Ellie White's new work contains what must be described as a searing beauty. Her grasp of how people live with incalculable difficulties is realized through language that is as memorable as a burn. Daily life requires that we abide both the strange intricacy of being a self as well as the endless list of external forces arrayed against us. Here is a book that can help us remain buoyant in spite of all that would weigh us down.
Tim Seibles, author of Fast Animal
About the Author
Ellie White has been over-dramatic since 1986. She holds a BA in English from The Ohio State University, and an MFA from Old Dominion University. Ellie writes nonfiction and poetry. She is also the creator of the comic strip "Uterus & Ellie." Her work has been published in Foundry, Slant, and The Columbia Review, as well as many other journals. Ellie's first poetry chapbook, Requiem for a Doll, won the ELJ Publications Poetry Mini-Collection Contest was released in June 2015. Her first full-length collection, "and for too long after," will be released on August 27th, 2019 by Unsolicited Press. Her second chapbook, "Drift," is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in Fall 2019. Ellie's work has won an Academy of American Poets College Poetry Prize, a Best of the Net nomination, and several Pushcart Prize nominations. Ellie served as a poetry editor at Barely South Review for three years. She also served as a nonfiction and poetry editor for Four Ties Literary Review for two years. Ellie is currently a social media editor and reader at Muzzle Magazine. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia and works full-time in the insurance industry.
