Afterfeast

Author: Lisa Hiton

Publisher: Tupelo Press (2021)

Hiton poses questions relevant to all of us: What does love reveal about―and make possible within―the individual? Can we ever truly understand another person's experience of the world around them? To what extent is the other ultimately inaccessible, a world unto herself? These are questions and realities that we all encounter, consciously or not. The answers come from a voice not often heard―female, Jewish, lesbian―yet sorely needed in our diverse world."I tell you what this silence stands for," Hiton claims; after diving into this collection we come away with a new understanding of the reality around us.
 
Afterfeast is a collection of ambitious poems in the tradition of Modernism. Hiton's lyric style imbues landscapes as varied as Greece and America with new tension, new significance, as the speaker searches for answers to questions of love and inheritance. Hiton's persistence in exploring and answering the questions she poses is clear in her poetry: "I am ill with history. With watching it happen and not belonging to it."
 
Winner of the Dorset Prize for Poetry, Afterfeast has been praised for its ability to explore "vast categories and fluid distinctions" with a voice whose senses "extend perception into other realms." This collection's lyric and provocative poems pull readers into familiar worlds yet unexplored, through a graceful curation of imagery and an enviable command of narrative.