BOOK REVIEW: EMILY SKAJA’S "BRUTE"
Brute, Emily Skaja, Graywolf Press (2019)
Winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, selected by Joy Harjo
Emily Skaja’s Brute explores the things a person learns about herself while navigating the close of an emotionally complex relationship. The speaker is at times savage and raw, other times sophisticated, sober. While the “brute” in the title speaks to the non-human she is with him and the bright animal she becomes after, it may also allude t