Danger Flower

Buzz & Kind Words

“The poems in Danger Flower are mossy, sensuous, linguistically vibrant and charged with an unapologetic, consequential desire -- a desire that mothers, hunts, flees, questions and buzzes with creative force. Jaclyn Desforges writes with the wolves of fairy tales and the yellowjackets of domestic life; Danger Flower is a glittering, lush, spectral wilderness of a book.”

— SHANNON BRAMER, AUTHOR OF PRECIOUS ENERGY

“There are books about sex, and then there are sexy books. Danger Flower is a sexy book, in the way that fear is sexy, and couplets are sexy, and light filtering through tree tops to warm a bed of moss is sexy. Jaclyn Desforges makes no apologies here, and thank god for that.

— MOLLY CROSS-BLANCHARD, AUTHOR OF EXHIBITIONIST

“Every line in Danger Flower, an anticipated debut collection of poetry by Pushcart-nominated poet Jaclyn Desforges, is intentional, evoking a memory, feeling, or sensation. Split into four sections, its short poems are lush and lyrical, bearing witness to the beguiling but grotesque natural world. “Zebra mussels cut me & I wade to shore, / dripping like murder,” writes Desforges in the collection’s fourth poem, “Father Figure,” revealing one of many intersections between pleasure and pain. An exploration of new motherhood, mortality, invisibility, and desire, Danger Flower is both timeless and timely.”

— JESSICA ROSE, THIS MAGAZINE SEP/OCT 2021

“Are fairy tales always cautionary in some core way? Fairy tales about women’s bodies and what can happen to them in the world certainly are. Ask Anne Sexton whose tortuously erotic ghost rides through Jaclyn Desforges’ eerie debut, Danger Flower. Her poems, most of them lyrics punctuated by spatial declaratives, relentless with stance and utterly contemporary (ranging from 80s Bonne Bell to 90s Tamagotchis and today’s incels and fapping to internet tits) don’t retell Snow White or Cinderella as Sexton’s Transformations (1971) did but they are certainly possessed by a similar witchy energy (also reminiscent of early Musgrave methinks), that terrifyingly sexy ‘thrust of the unicorn.’ 

Although in “The End,” Desforges announces that, “Today maybe I’ll just be direct/It won’t be a fairy tale,” her quartet of potentially poisonous-bloomed sections (kicking things off with the rosary pea, a flower that contains the toxin abrin) are most potent when their bodily knowledges are encased in weird sorceries, odd declaratives, nursery rhyme strangenesses (“A Process of Maturation” say that takes The House that Jack Built and twists it into an anaphoric tale of Anna, from her physicality and hat to her ‘consciousness problem’) and other somatic spells.”

— CATHERINE OWEN, MARROW REVIEWS, NOV. 2021

“The winner of last year’s Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry, Jaclyn Desforges’ Danger Flower is a tour de force in a deceptively small volume. I’ve often said that poetry is one of the most powerful of literary arts in that it takes the reader by surprise; a single line or specific word choice can evoke a whole range of imagery that lasts long after you’ve finished reading. And here, Desforges’ poetic voice is a visceral sensation that evokes so many images and electrifies the senses that this small volume of mere 80 pages feels like it’s bursting with primal power and, yes, danger…. Desforges’ combination of raw honesty, earthy wisdom, and wild imagery seemingly plucked from the world of the fae makes Danger Flower one of the strongest books of poetry I’ve had the chance to read in a while. Certainly, her unapologetic yet deeply vulnerable tone distinguishes her as one of the rising stars in the  Hamilton literary scene. Desforges has already earned numerous accolades for her work including the RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award and HPL’s Short Works Prize. With this award-winning collection, she deftly shows a bold writing voice with an exciting promise for the future.”

— STEPHEN NEAR, BEYOND JAMES