The Eggshell Skull Rule

In The Eggshell Skull Rule, Amy Strauss Friedman masterfully constructs a home from “a foundation of velvet” and “holy bricks.” This is a home that becomes flesh, that becomes mystical in its emotional resonance, where “all wounds fasten memory at bone level.” Strauss Friedman’s home is a gorgeously human place of “growling beauty,” of “celestial livers, kidneys, /guts, hearts.” The poems in this debut collection take my breath away with their unceasing pressure on words and on the relationships of the mother, the daughter, the family. The Eggshell Skull Rule bears witness to the resilience of language, love, and a heart that throbs: “Alive alive alive.”

Jennifer Martelli, author of The Uncanny Valley and After Bird

Amy Strauss Friedman’s poetry evokes Janus, a god who gazed simultaneously at past and future. “We confront, we glass, we fragment /what once we forged,” she writes, capturing the realization that what seemed to be iron might be the most fragile of all, poised to shatter. Her lines dart after mother and motherhood, old heartbreaks and uncertain futurescapes, all while struggling to inhabit the aching, brittle now.

Jessica Walsh, author of How to Break My Neck

In Amy Strauss Friedman’s The Eggshell Skull Rule, the bodies of mothers and daughters blend into one another and explode apart in alienating synchronicity, leaving the reader to reassemble their own ghosts and question if everything has been put back together. Strauss Friedman’s poems challenge us to scrutinize our own reflection in the mirror. Does your portrait actually look like you think it looks? She dissembles bodies: teeth are on the outside, blood is spilt. From the poem “She Who Never Presented Herself Even When Present”: “Forgive me for the blood that weeps from my hands. //But red was all I knew of climate, / all that seasoned my food.” Perhaps catastrophic relationships slice us open and we survive; perhaps not.

Jennifer MacBain-Stephens, author of Your Best Asset is a White Lace Dress and The Messenger is Already Dead