MOUTH coming soon for purchase!
Praise for MOUTH
What is one of the main things we have in common with sharks after death? Between our milk teeth and adult teeth, what is the path of development?
MOUTH answers these questions, but is not a book that does not bother with the slow burn starting in medias res, in the middle of all the things that will unzip the answers to those questions.
This collection of lyric essays begins with, “Baby, he says, less teeth,” only to quickly follow as clash points of the following are brought together: intimacy and violence; scientific fact juxtaposed with granular moments in the wild (Yes, this includes humans); philosophical and existential; power and disempowerment (and no, not in the ways you might assume); and hard edges pressed against, sometimes enmeshing with, the soft and vulnerable.
Through bringing all of these things together alongside of the fact that this collection can be devoured easily within one sitting due to its liquid nature, Becca Rae Rose Does not take the reader’s engagement for granted. Each opportunity, each page, each section encountered, bring us in close contact with an investigation of the human mouth with surgical precision. The collection signals and warns , through sentences like, “What if I became a woman not through an event but through a slow gathering of instructions?” We are reminded while being instructed, “…we knew that survival isn’t just about what you can sink your teeth into.”
No different than the transformation that takes place by the end of Angela Carter’s, “The Tiger’s Bride,” we are left shocked, awed, glee-filled, and rereading from the beginning for clues. We are also left, asking ourselves, does the human mouth and what we put into it, serve as a tale of caution or an invitation to become? Can it be both?
— Shanta Lee, co-editor of Sign & Breath: Voice and the Literary Tradition
Rejecting ironic detachment, MOUTH roves, like a series of Nan Golden snapshots, across a life jagged with trouble. When Becca Rae Rose says, "Our teeth outlive us," an anatomical fact rings like a warning. This is a wise, unsettling book.
—Joshua Davis, author of Authentic Embellishments: Fragments of a Life Saved by Poetry
In this stunning collection, Becca Rae Rose gets as close as a dentist with a mouth mirror, using the language of teeth to explore themes of sexuality and societal expectation, braiding together childhood memories with a present moment in the bathroom of a bar. MOUTH is an enduring collection that has the power to challenge perceptions. This lyrical journey presents a meditation on each quadrant of the mouth, asking, “What is a girl without her smile?” and noting that long after we die, our teeth are the only thing left: “Call it decoration, call it relic. Keep it beneath a pillow or wear it on a necklace.”
– Rosa Sophia Godshall, author of Many Miles
Becca Rae Rose is a triple fire sign, cribbage player, and a wannabe wildlife biologist. She’s a graduate of the MFA Program in Writing at UC San Diego and a co-founder of ( peel lit ) and KALEIDOSCOPED MAG. Her work has appeared in Western Humanities Review, Swamp Ape Review, and PANK. She lives and teaches in San Diego, where she’s working on a novel about bats.