“To be quiet and still is, for a birdwatcher, to invite and to attend. So for the poems in Stephanie McCarley Dugger’s Either Way, You’re Done: they see ‘bustle and glamor’ in lightning bugs set off by an approaching storm to hovering above bean rows, they hear ‘the unmistakable sound / of husk pulled away from the ear,’ they see ‘the carefully / stitched hydrangeas. But also / the mud, the burned / trash.’ In Either Way, You’re Done, Stephanie McCarley Dugger has gathered poems of notice, quiet and still, inviting song, hearing it when it visits, spotting its source.”
—H. L. Hix, author of Rain Inscription
“In these chiseled yet generous poems, Stephanie McCarley Dugger wrestles with history, place and inheritance. In conjuring love and its damages—these fields, these rivers and floods—in turning what’s lived into image and articulated shape, she answers her own question: what to do with the stones collected from the river? One writes poems on them, one holds them in one’s hand.”
—Kate Northrop, author of Clean
“Either Way, You’re Done is, among other things, about the roles we take and abandon throughout our lives, and how, after unearthing what has been buried, the world turned inside out, ‘we start over, / moonstruck, / silent.’ Dark and foreboding, tender and thoughtful, Stephanie McCarley Dugger’s distinct voice shines through, wanting to be known, understood, to love and be loved. ‘I imagine what it would be like to be part of such faithfulness, / and decide I want to be found, / ripped open —to know you.’ Poems of destruction and repair. Poems of loss and of what one dares hope for. What I cherish most is the balance between intimacy and restraint in each line, in the space before and after each line. Within this balance, we find a wisdom, revealed without pretense or affectation, hard won, that I didn’t know I needed.”
—Blas Falconer, author of Forgive the Body This Failure
“Either Way, You’re Done may sound dire, but with poet Stephanie Dugger, the reader is invited to witness a life lived boldly, in language and in song. Our poet allows herself to be vulnerable, revealing, in lines that hold firm even when complex feelings and real dangers are being explored. The poem is less an autopsy than a lens for viewing the present through key images of the past, a way of expressing emotion. Where we might expect rage, we find subtle portraits, artfully contained. The poet never looks away, never falters. In Stephanie Dugger’s work, a ‘steady hand is non-negotiable.'”
—Marilyn Kallet, author of 18 books, including How Our Bodies Learned