Bringing together the themes of death, of gender and sexuality, the poet creates a speaker whose language and experience, linked from poem to poem, reflects the true complexity of a woman’s perspective. Death is a prevalent theme; anxiety, fear and paranoia simmer throughout the poems. Regret, too, is a recurrent theme, as previous experience defines us even by its absence. The societal construct of womanhood, questions of aging, and female stereotypes are opportunities for an analysis of women’s roles and the speaker’s need to subvert modern ideals of femininity and sexuality. The poems often employ satire or self-parody and wry humour to suggest that a woman’s understanding of her options in the twenty-first century, in light of the many waves of feminism, is always in flux and always challenging.

Myna Wallin is an author and editor in Toronto. She has her Masters degree in English Literature from U of T. Her first poetry collection, A Thousand Profane Pieces, was published in 2006 by Tightrope Books. Her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including The Algonquin Square Table Anthology, Contemporary Verse 2, Existere, Eye Weekly, Kiss Machine, the Literary Review of Canada, Matrix, Misunderstandings Magazine, Nod, Surface and Symbol, Taddle Creek, and Word: Canada's Magazine for Readers and Writers. She received an Honourary Mention in the 2010 Winston Collins/Descant Prize for Best Canadian Poem. www.mynawallin.com .

Myna Wallin's profile page

“Myna Wallin investigates, without fear, “this duplicity of meaning, of motive, of self” in poems that dive into the painful or awkward past and a youthful, continuous lust for men and clothes and life. Along the way, she bears in mind the kitsch of the high backed bondage chair or foot-damaging pair of Louboutins, while defiantly declaring she will curl up and sleep amongst the beige and brown spotted bodies of her domesticated family of bobcats. Wallin’s arch style somehow convinces us we’ll always yearn for love and heartbreak.”

—Nyla Matuk, author of Stranger

“Effervescently centering each poem’s surface is the universal solvent, love, in all its grand, minute, nebulous, recollected and misunderstood permutations. These deeply introspective, poignant, reflective, compelling, yet simultaneously life-affirming and humorous poems dance “across a trellis/ with such bravado, bold, ornate,/ luxurious to the touch/ their feet in the shade, their faces in the sun.”

—Michael Fraser, author of To Greet Yourself Arriving

“With her brilliantly chosen title, Anatomy of an Injury, Myna Wallin proceeds to examine a series of agonizing loves: Love for a mother lost at a young age to cancer, then, love for a lifetime of amours “because love and longing for it, is the only thing/ I’m really good at.” In her disarming candor, she is a Canadian Anne Sexton, forthright, glamourous, savvy—and innocent. A feminist in a “sparkly dress,” Wallin understands that vanity, too, has its desperate, daily discipline, even when “I’ve Reached the Age of I Don’t Care.” But very happily someone the poet would “do anything to keep around” arrives by the end of this winsome book.”

—Molly Peacock, author of The Analyst and The Paper Garden