The Hot Garment of Love

The Hot Garment of Love is the first book of poetry from Brooklyn-based poet and performer Elizabeth Reddin.

Elizabeth Reddin was born in Torrance, California at the Little Company of Mary Hospital; in 1993 she moved to New York City. She plays music in a story band called Legends, with Raquel Vogl and James Loman, and teaches GED classes. Her work has been published in The Brooklyn Rail as well as in UDP's newspaper New York Nights and poetry journal 6x6.

"This book is a filmic immersion in the sensorium of a being seeking to understand its incarnation in the body of a girl. The girl's struggle with her consciousness and her search for some stable ground of reality reads like a lyric existential detective novel. Exquisite descriptions, observations, and meditations are subjected to multiple, even contradictory interpretations, and the narrative arises from tactile linkages that announce themselves almost subliminally, rather than being predetermined. Each phrase, each paragraph tells a little story, and in the space between them Reddin generously makes room for the reader's own storehouse of experiences to interact. Oh sure, there're anxiety, terror, shame, horror, confusion, and the occasional bloodbath mixed in with the shockingly beautiful images, but Reddin's touch is so light that coming along for the ride inside her mind is pure pleasure. Basically, this is the only book I want to read right now." – Laurie Weeks