title: The Lame God (Swenson Poetry Award)
author:  M. B. McLatchey 
description: <DIV>&ldquo;There can be no healing, no closure. Still, if your traumatic experiences don&rsquo;t destroy you they can produce masterful works, in which human nature rises to its heights . . . The effect is powerful, and as a result of the author&rsquo;s disciplining her wildest emotions, we weep for her.&rdquo;</DIV><DIV>&mdash;From the foreword by Edward Field,&#160;American poet and essayist and contest judge</DIV><br /><br /><DIV><P>&ldquo;This book is crushing and brilliantly written. If ever there were a time for McLatchey&rsquo;s deeply moving and compassionate poems, it is now with the crazed, unchecked violence against our children. There are no elegies here, only a powerful intellect at work and a truly gifted poet&rsquo;s heartbreaking songs to our lost children.&rdquo; <BR>&ndash;Jeffrey Greene, author of <I>Beautiful Monsters</I></P></DIV><br /><br /><DIV><P>&ldquo;In magisterial cadences, this powerful poetic sequence gives voice to the unspeakable and transposes profound grief into immortal song. McLatchey's poems are talismans and spells&mdash;not against loss but against forgetting.&rdquo; <BR>&ndash;Philip Brady, author of <I>Fathom</I> and co-founder of <I>Etruscan Press</I></P></DIV>
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  _Praise for_ THE DEVIL’S LARDER
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘One subversive, lyrical banquet. Disquieting yet somehow affirming, this is
  poetic manna for the imaginary soul, and if not from heaven, then from
  
  
  an even more tempting, voluptuous recess’  
  
  
  _Observer_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Clever and original . . . fanciful, poetic . . . wholly convincing’  
  
  
  _Independent_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Peculiar, funny, blunt and sad all at the same time. Crace writes with a
  passion and a slinky quirkiness which he sustains throughout this
  
  
  collection of twisted tales’  
  
  
  _List_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘A literary dish fit for the Gods [and] all discerning readers. Beautifully
  written, witty ... It is a feast’  
  
  
  _Herald_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Deliciously written’  
  
  
  _Arena_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Crace constructs modern riddles, fables, fantasies, jokes, tragedies and
  comedies out of food’  
  
  
  _New Statesman_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### _The Devil’s Larder_
  
  
  
  
  
  JIM CRACE is the author of _Continent, The Gift of Stones, Arcadia, Signals of
  Distress, Quarantine_
  
  
  (winner of the 1998 Whitbread