An Absence of Fear
by Holly Peppe
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Pub Date 7 Jan 2025 | Archive Date Not set
Amplify Publishing | Waxwing Island Press
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Description
Unpretentious, finely crafted, and luminous in their depth of feeling, the collected poems of Holly Peppe reflect a love for language and its nuances. They vary in mood and tone, incorporating vivid observations of people and places, insights into human wants and needs, and dark humor disguising fears that are often all too real: “We laugh when we run out of fear.”
An Absence of Fear offers readers a primer on how to be sensitive to the world around us while living every day to the fullest, even after learning it might be our last.
Advance Praise
“A delightful and stirring discovery, these love poems and elegies of Holly Peppe. Her gifts as a lyric poet include a rare balance of epigrammatic wit with deep passion and tenderness. Her crystalline stanzas juxtaposing love and death linger in the memory: there is nothing greater we can ask of our poets than such resonance.”
Daniel Mark Epstein is the author of twenty books of poetry, biography, history, and the upcoming Constellations: Collected Poems (LSU Press, 2025)
“Holly Peppe’s An Absence of Fear is filled with tenderness, undisguised longing for love, and a simultaneous acceptance of, and protest against, death. This book, which we understand as we read will probably be Peppe’s last, wanders the past and the future. Carrying us into death watches and to moments of uncontainable eros, her poems cleave to Malebranche’s beautiful notion that 'attention is the natural prayer of the soul.' The casual tone of the final section is in disarming, evocative tension with a cancer diagnosis it both chronicles and defies. There is no bravura, just the courage of someone seeking to describe both the outer and inner worlds with regard and humor.”
Catherine Barnett is the author of four collections of poetry, including Human Hours and Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space
Marketing Plan
As part of the marketing for An Absence of Fear, we are pursuing national and genre-focused media along with bookstore representation and speaking opportunities.
As part of the marketing for An Absence of Fear, we are pursuing national and genre-focused media along with bookstore representation and speaking opportunities.
Available Editions
EDITION | Paperback |
ISBN | 9798891383975 |
PRICE | US$14.95 (USD) |
PAGES | 120 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
A quick easy poetry read about life and death.
About growing up, losing parents and grandparents.
I would recommend.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Here are some of my favorite quotes.
“I wish I believed in heaven instead of a physical death“ (this may be my favorite because I can resonate with it a lot. Some of us don’t believe in a heaven and that’s okay.)
“In many ways loving is like dying.“
“I warn the boys (don’t give too little)
I warn the girls (don’t give too much)“
Thank you NetGalley for this arc. All opinions are my own.
A compilation of poetry that seems to span many years. The last poems are about the author’s terminal illness and I enjoyed (that seems the wrong word… felt?) them the most.
This was a poignant and quietly powerful poetry collection. Some of these really shook me to my core, while there were mundane ones. Highly recommend.
Really beautiful collection of poetry. Covers a wide variety of topics and emotions. Definitely recommend.
A thoroughly enjoyable collection. Perhaps enjoyable seems not to be the right word here but there is no word better to sum it up. In the midst of all the death and the sadness of the world, every poem here shows there is a life you live in this place, a life you can love. For every sadness in this collection, there is beauty. This is a collection in which many will find beauty but would be best thumbed by lovers of Dickinson, Mary Oliver, and the Pulitzer novelist Marilyne Robbinson. Whilst there were a few poems that were not quite to my taste and felt to me a little flat I think says more about me than it does Peppe's poetry. There are so many wonderful poems here which I shall be thinking of for days to come. I can only say how much I admire the ability to experience something terrible and transform it into something beautiful.
What a beautiful, honest, and heartfelt collection of poetry. It is evident that this author poured her soul and her personal experiences of joy, pain, and grief into each poem, slowly revealing major events of life and loss throughout. The title is perfect for this collection, which demonstrates the author’s resilience to rise up and keep living despite certain circumstances. She has laid her soul bare and her feelings are palpable, especially within the last few poems. I would definitely recommend this collection to everyone! Thank you to NetGalley, Holly Peppe, and Amplify Publishing for the gifted ARC in exchange for an honest review.
An Absence of Fear is a beautiful, lyrical, yet poignant book of poetry. It gradually tells the story of loss, grief, and terminal illness, scattered throughout beautiful observations of nature, animals, and life.
I loved this book of poetry. I loved the writing, which was lyrical and whimsical from the introduction. I loved the gradual story of what happened to the author, and the slow realisation of what eventually happened. The poems were honest and heartbreaking, loving and pure. It was easy to see the authors’ feelings through the verses.
This is an excellent book for a poetry veteran or novice. The verses are easy to understand, and paint a vivid picture in the readers’ mind.
Thank you to Netgalley and Amplify Publishing for an Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) of this book. All opinions are my own.
A poet's heart is often touched or opened by other poets. The almost magical quality of poetry and its ability to say so much more than the words it shares, the rhythms find purchase and tease open hidden aspects of ones being, reminding you of who you are. You may be surprised by the differences and similarities with that other poet, who here leads you, unsuspecting, into the greatest depths of being. Of where we will all ultimately be led. Starting reading with the mind, the reviewers eye, then quietly being taken into the unexpected heart of the matter, all the more welcome and revealing for how open you have becomes to where you are being taken. Much like life, and death. Thank you Holly.
An Absence of Fear by Holly Peppe is a vast collection spanning many years of life and writing (or at least this is how it felt). For me this was both the collection's strength and weakness. The poems seemingly written later in Peppe's career were stunning portrayals of living, skill and poetic sensibility. Other poems paled in comparison and this meant the collection as a whole seemed quite a 'hit or miss' experience at times. This said, Peppe is undeniably talented, having curated the work of many others in her career. Her work is life-affirming, particularly towards the end where her poems honestly explore an incurable cancer diagnosis - finding meaning and purpose, and ultimately living with open arms, rather than fear.
"This small, brief life - a random poem scrawled."
Since poetry is so personal some collections will resonate more with you than others. While I didn't have strong feelings one way or another regarding the majority of the poems in this collection, some of them struck a chord with me. Especially Chapter VI. Terminal Benefits feels the most raw, most personal, and most emotional.
It is clear to see that a lot of skill and knowledge went into crafting these poems. My biggest gripe with this collection is that is feels quite disjointed. I personally found it hard to sometimes discover the themes that were used to divide this collection in their respective chapters. This made it feel like it wasn't a very coherent collection.
However I am not too proud to admit, that it is entirely possible that I just missed the mark somewhere. I've read and written poetry, and studied it on a surface level. But I haven't dedicated years of my life to it, so the possibility that I am just missing something here exists.
"The truth you know resounds again:
we are smaller than the fragile bones
of birds with wobbly legs
who neither sing nor scorn the silences
that glorify their flight."
I would recommend An Absence of Fear to readers who love poetry that covers a wide variety of topics and is presented in varied forms. This collection features an exploration of childhood, relationships, grief, death and more.
An exploration of love, life, death and what it means to be alive. Holly Peppe delves into the mundane world with a magnifying glass - showing just what it means to be human. There are plenty of themes influenced by her sad news and contemplation of mortality throughout, and ‘Night Letter to Carole’ may or may not have made me tear up a little bit…
I loved that the language was simple and unpretentious - exactly as the description promised - yet somehow the imagery created with simple words was genuinely beautiful. I really enjoyed this poetry collection!