Catastrophic Molting

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Amy Shimshon-Santo uses the tools of language to remind readers there is power in repudiation, comfort in collective mourning, and possibility in reimagining. The book title is inspired by the molting ritual of sea elephants (Mirounga Angustirostris) along the California coast. The mirounga rest together on the shore as social protection from violence when they are the most vulnerable. Only through these periods of dramatic change can they grow sleek new coats. The book’s journey begins with “Contagion,” revealing a world split in half like a calabash by a virus. “Beating, trembling,” a woman pleads for mercy while the poems confront the liminality of profound change. “A new cycle had begun / I would never be the same again.” The second section, Sangue, gives voice to mourning and rage. “when you murder the future of music / you are conjuring extinction.” Dysfunction on planet Earth reverberates from the street into the expansive galaxy. Refusing to normalize violence, the poet gathers war inside her own body to detonate it, then blows “tsunami-wind / to rattle clear the desks.” With the verve of Oya, the goddess of ancestral and radical change, the book claims ground for empathy and inter-being. The collection asks readers to imagine: “what if we were a part of a whole / that loved us without ceasing?” Catastrophic Molting breaks from inertia and seeks new ground. Our “foremothers greet the unborn” and are “betrothed to a story that doesn’t wish us dead.” Shimshon-Santo suggests that “stepping off might actually be, stepping in / turning away might actually be, turning toward.”

Reviews & Blessings

“Catastrophic Molting, is a brilliant, impassioned, and urgent collection.” Literary Mama, “A Mother’s Resistance Poetry: A Review of Catastrophic Molting,” by Diane Gottlieb.

Catastrophic Molting “captures all the messy dichotomies of a profound, definitive moment on our lifetimes…“Both a prayer and a benediction, blessing the poet and the reader…” - Washington Independent Book Review by Angela Maria Spring.

The Rumpus interview of Amy with Janet Rodriguez.

“Books I’m Excited About,” Lynne Thompson (Poet Laureate of Los Angeles) for the LA Public Library.