Quarry

This book transitions, is in transition, comes through transition. It describes a state of tension, of anxiety, of becoming. Lines blur between person and place: this pond was a quarry, was excavated from a prior landscape. The discussion of body, of bodily changes is amorphous, we begin with bois and bodies colliding, moments of aloneness and of intimacy?. Quarry is full of hard minerals, of stones, of pebbles. It chips away. A pebble is a stone you can take with you, a souvenir. Bodies and ecosystems cannot fail to leave traces of themselves; they alter things. These minerals hint at the skeleton beneath flesh, ?the body is only a vase for holding." The book a body, the book bringing us alongside the body, witnessing body in relation, in environment, in flux.

-Claire Lacey, Debutantes

Tanis Franco's debut collection of poetry is as dense as it is moving, with new dimensions presenting themselves on each re-read.

- Marcela Huerta, Montreal Review of Books

Franco here writes beautifully, with imagery of the can?t-go-back sort, line breaks that magnify scenes, and a tone that feels plain-true (yet far from plain). However, the poems are worth reading not for what they do on the page-vacuum, but for where they guide the reader, by way of things concrete (stones, rocks, a quarry), to a place of only being, to the seen/un/seen?s edge.

- Hayden Bergman, The Literary Review

Quarry reminded me of all the things I love about poetry . . . A collection that will last, and one I will recommend for some time.

- Evelyn Deshane, Plenitude Magazine