“The poems in What Will Keep Us Alive are told in a strong, authoritative voice that made me sit up and listen. ‘Break me like a stained cup.’ ‘Let the sparkle fall from your fingers.’ ‘Light a match and wander west.’ I will do as these poems command willingly and eagerly, for Kristin LaTour is a poet who has something to say and isn’t afraid to say it. Fierce, funny, fearless, and finely-crafted, these are fabulous poems I will read, ponder, and share with friends, colleagues, and students again and again and again.”
—Lesléa Newman, author of I Carry My Mother and October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard
“Kristin LaTour’s American song flies from the heartland full of sun, shadow, full winds, and explosions of lightning all along its highways. Wonderful and alive.”
—Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Water Museum and The Hummingbird’s Daughter
“Shifting from Barbie to Spidergirl, from shooting the family dog to lycanthropy, these poems are sirens filled with seething. Like the darkest of fairy tales, LaTour’s work repeatedly charms as it wounds. Transitioning us from the haunting assertion that ‘your own lion’s heart will be brave in darkness’ to the sinister tenor of incest where ‘The door cracked open/and light spread like broken yolks,’ What Will Keep Us Alive navigates childhood horrors as well as female oppression, erasure, and escape. And though these ‘Mid-western spells’ are strewn with bloody dresses, they are lit in ‘beautiful shades of Naples yellow,’ emphasizing succor, solace and healing.”
—Simone Muench, author of Wolf Centos
“Varied and often visceral, the poems in What Will Keep Us Alive will take you in, then tip you over. Characters from Lot and his wife to Barbie to the human cannonball each contribute a bit of Kristin LaTour’s unique slant on the world, and we’re the lucky observers who get to go for the ride. These poems will help us find our ‘own / old leather book, translate the pages of runes / into something that saves’ us.”
—Ruth Foley, author of Dear Turquoise and Creature Feature