Women Twice Removed

In Women Twice Removed, Christina Lloyd unveils an inventive and incisive ekphrasis. Her Lorca-like eye moves from canvases by Spanish artists such as Zurbarán, Varo, Velázquez, and Goya, to the life and work of her grandmother (herself a sculptor), to landscapes of California and Spain, to the most elusive subject of all—the self. Lloyd’s poems are personal without being solipsistic, hopeful but not glib, mournful but never nihilistic. I admire how Lloyd is willing to name and feel profound loss while simultaneously celebrating the crushing contours of life. Rita Dove notes correctly that “poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful,” two adjectives that perfectly describe this collection.

I don’t know how Dove presaged the masterpiece that is Women Twice Removed, 

but I am grateful for both miracles. I love this book.

—Dean Rader, author of Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly 

In Christina Lloyd’s haunting and extraordinary collection, we experience the search for a true ancestral home. Where does the speaker end and the (grandm)other begin? Which is the language of connection and which of separation? From squid ink to paintings to feral cats to sculptures to mummies to family portraits, these poems navigate the tensions and energies that exist across cultures and through deep time. With a deftness and specificity that is both gorgeous and arresting, they sing out over a familiar meadow, inviting us to remember our own versions of “a finger cut so deep // it became a gill.”

Women Twice Removed is an elegant, unsettling book.

—Caroline Goodwin, author of Madrigals and Old Snow, White Sun

Christina Lloyd’s poetry, in Women Twice Removed, is intense and tautly eloquent. The poems are prominently tethered to Lloyd’s grandmother, Esperanza, whose name means “hope,” and who journeyed from Spain to the Philippines and on to California. Life, it is said, begins with a stumble, and so here begins the life of these arresting poems, which delve into what Christina and her grandmother experienced along the way. Lloyd’s poetry is like a tree that is well rooted and stands tall. Her poems speak quietly; her images are paintings. Read these poems slowly, and take the time to reflect, to savor each line, and to believe in hope.

Binding: Perfect-bound paperback

Press run: 500 copies

Page count: 88

Publication date: April 2, 2024

Distributor: Small Press Distribution