Maybe the Body

“This debut links memory, the Filipino diaspora, and ecological themes in lyric and braided forms as it explores the impact of inheritance, art, and geography.”—Publishers Weekly

“Maybe the Body is a radiant collection, a generous offering full of flora and fury, plums, and caterpillars. These poems are a field of inheritance where language, history, and lineage collide, and in Drake’s capable hands, the body becomes both question and altar.”—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders and Bite by Bite

“‘Sometimes, history is too beautiful to be believed,’ Asa Drake writes in her collection Maybe the Body, which is an extensive love song of memory, family, self, and the challenges of differentiating one from the other. When a speaker wades in a river that runs beneath an interstate, they think of a mother’s words: ‘Care first. Decide about love later.’ This book is about places and homes: ones we don’t want to lose, ones we find in others, and those we must decide to build for ourselves. Maybe the Body is the home I have longed for.”—Phillip B. Williams, author of Mutiny and Ours

“To inhabit the pages of the deeply introspective Maybe the Body is to ‘walk / through the valley of semblance.’ Here, investigation and insight lie in the backhanded compliment, the letter of resignation, the shifting landscape in a storm, the microaggression, the I love you, the surcharge, and the moments of transcription and erasure. Every poem perches resolutely on the hyphen, the intersection in a Venn diagram. This collection debuts Asa Drake as a sage of liminal states and spaces.”—Janine Joseph, author of Decade of the Brain