The Woman With Three Elbows

"Rachael Ikins possesses the addictive fluency of a natural storyteller with her ability to write in such varied genres. Of all her styles, the brevity of confessional memoir in poetry strikes me deepest. Following a tradition of gifted women before her, Ikins candidly illustrates the almost indescribable condition of suffering in such a potent, purposeful way; it is both haunting and necessary. We need courageous voices such as hers, to vividly paint truth and not shy away from it. Fascinating, devastating, unapologetic, and ultimately redemptive, I found Ikins' latest collection stayed beneath my skin long after reading." -CANDICE LOUISA DAQUIN, Author of Tainted by the Same Counterfeit

"Rachael Ikins is a true original. Reading her book is like viewing an often painful biography in fragments interspersed and overlaid with a rapid-fire montage of vivid perceptions from both the past and present of the poems' speaker. Like Walt Whitman, Ikins uses the comma at once as a divider and a linker of such perceptions, often seeming to emanate from multiple different parts of her mind and history almost simultaneously, not synthesizing but allowing them to interact. Her poems are living documents of imaginative thought." -ADAM CORNFORD, Freelance Editor & Writer and Author of Lalia

"A surrealistic-lyrical memoir as startling as it is poignant; using sensory storytelling and drawings to teach us: "What is the story; on purpose or accidental? Pen and ink run ahead on pebbled snow." Her point of view is steady, like a tripod, the three elbows hold the focus, narrative to narrative, allowing the reader to take in the unflinching reality that can be both tender as well as brutal. Her interior voice is uncanny-the way it catches the reader off-guard, as if it were a whisper heard below one's ear-that intimate conversation that isn't afraid to reveal the unexpected twists and turns which name an unexpected joy. Living to tell 'the secrets of our darker natures' and holding this remarkable life up to the light." -M.J. IUPPA, Author of The Weight of Air and Rock. Paper. Scissors.