The season of lilacs is monstrous

The season of lilacs is monstrous is a study in contradictions: candied almonds that break teeth, lilacs that can't be milked, getting the things you want then breaking them like glass. Francesca Kritikos writes hunger and gluttony, violence and power, sex and shame with equal parts care and severity. Brutal in their precision and cutting in their spareness, these poems hold beauty and love and all that one sanctifies up to the light then finely carve back to expose a darker matter beneath. For Kritikos' speaker, there is no transformation, only transfiguration—a whittling of the self down to its most base form.

'This smart, racy collection of poems from Francesca Kritikos is a portrait in severity, resignation, provocation. Francesca’s control and dominance over the line is a marvel. Like Elfriede Jelinek’s The Piano Teacher, or Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School, the speaker(s) in Kritikos’ The season of lilacs is monstrous follow in a lineage of women who get exactly what they don’t want.' – Ben Fama, author of If I Close My Eyes, Fantasy, and Deathwish