Ruined Beauty: Poems - Paperback

Ruined Beauty is gorgeous. Bitting's unforgettable poems often feel like timeless architecture or theater. Brothers buried in "ghost country," a daughter now "a he." The titular poem, about an entire town devastated by fire, is itself devastating, "a sifted testament," "a someday salvation" somehow soaring out of the ruin. These are brilliant, transformative poems from an indomitable talent.

-Lee Herrick

Ruined Beauty is an act of masterful flamboyance and swiftness of mind for those who believe in the enchanting flow of language and art. Such memories and wisdoms are guided as much by the long dance of time in the body as they are passionate testimonies of living. We find "our way to see the stars through wars." Forget neominimalism. These poems reach and reach because Bitting never stops revering what is in front of her -the feeling of being alive, the feeling of flying.

-Major Jackson

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In her sixth collection, Michelle Bitting writes from the wreckage-of fire, of family, of the body. Ruined Beauty opens in the aftermath of the January 2025 Los Angeles fires and moves deeper into losses that precede and follow. Anchored by the mystic figure of Saint Teresa of Ávila-whose ecstasy Bernini carved and whose severed hand graces the back cover-these poems drawing on dance, myth, film, and scripture. Bitting moves fluidly between lyric compression and sprawling, breathless meditation, building a book about what survives and the ferocious act of continuing to make from the ashes. Published by Walton Well Press with an introduction by Theresia de Vroom.