Time Begins to Hurt

The world of Little's poems is a dark one, for sure, where the harm / the damage" we humans inflict - on the environment, on one another - is rendered unflinchingly. Her poems about family, for instance, make it clear that 'social distancing' is not just a phenomenon of the past two years. Love is present too, often inextricably bound up with the pain it can cause ("I keep loving you like an old bruise / still tender") but expressed in such rich and startling language, it is its own reward." Esther Morgan "Opening a book by Pippa Little I know I will find the kind of directness one can trust. There will be images that make the world of a page real... That is what Pippa Little does so well. And she does it with wide range, with different modes, various poetics... we find that the landscape therein is our solitude: however inventive it is also bare, like a person who cannot sleep and stares and stares all night at a blank wall. Which is to say, we recognize ourselves in these pages, our days, our questions. And the pages fortify. Why? Because they are honest." Ilya Kaminsky