Small Gestures
Poetry by Melissa Wray
“Not just gorgeous to read, but useful, this book is a gift and an invitation, to join Mel on her journey of healing from addiction and illness, seeing what that can look like from the inside. We share her experience of walking through it, connecting with others, as she ultimately finds her way.
”Her simple honesty is powerful, and her courage in sharing her experiences shows the great heart of a poet.
”Mel's easy compassion, truly seeing without judgement, those who enter her world, give us insight into struggles we all encounter.
”We walk with her into intimate places, get close enough to feel the raw beginnings of healing, move with her to acceptance and love for her precious life, full of sensual pleasures, deep insight, and joy.”
“Mel writes like a ghost, from the wincing wanderings of youth, hot flowers and smoky lovers, Small Gestures reads like a shifting dream that capitulates to the razors cut of what it is to love and to be human.”
“Small Gestures is a compact collection of poetry written by a young woman about a life full of bounty and blood, love and lust, heuristics and horror. You can learn so much about yourself as you enter the mind of an artist as she explores her body, rages against her mind, and is attracted to and appalled by humanity in all of its beauty and beastliness. Have you ever seen a terrier stand up to a black bear? That is this writer, small and fierce, bravely waking up every day to live a life of profound meaning despite pain and loss.”
“Love, sex, addiction, recovery. Bodies aflame with promise and hope; souls singed by indifference and abuse. Wray, with precision wordplay, gives us a tour of one woman’s journey through damage and growth; through the vulgar and the erotic. Each poem is a captivating tableau, snapshots of existence that, like all great writing, expose the author’s ghosts. One is both repelled and aroused, angered and enlightened. In short, this book is a masterpiece of self-reflection and expiation.”
“Small Gestures is a visceral and raw poetry that gives light and honesty to broken humanity. The writing breathes with compassion, hope, and hopelessness. Uttering the emotions of rage, pain, love, and joy. A beautifully written letter to the world that says: 'I SEE YOU'.
“Written in a simple format to follow, all while still pulsing with power and life and magic. Each sentence draws you into the emotions on every page. Quietly demanding that you FEEL. To be a part of each story told. To SEE people. Small Gestures is not a book of pretty nothings. This book of poetry is a tribute to those in suffering. A homage to those who survived and those who did not. It speaks of loss and gain in equal parts. A true rendering of the human existence as it stands now. It touches on the bonds of family and the struggle for the need of companionship in a tug-of-war with self-preservation. Ending softly with undertones of a harsh reality. It speaks on acceptance. Of falling and rising. One of the most powerful books of poetry I have ever read. It is a book one experiences as much as reads. A true gift to any with a love for books.”
—Talia Helderop
“Melissa Wray’s Small Gestures frames a feminine worldview of constant sexual microaggressions, scarred and wounded bodies, relentless indignities, poverty and crushed dreams. Her poems present the wracked minutiae of raw observations moving through our streets and institutions. Wray’s ability to imprint and acknowledge the torment and pain of the inhuman circus in which she herself descended is a blessed healing she delivers, not simply to herself, but to us all. Who among us has not watched over the perishing of loved ones, include-ing parts of ourselves, to the grinding meat-wheel of lost hope and self-hatred that is the daily sustenance of addiction and the sound of dark subterranean rivers flooding these poems? And then, as if defying gravity and the laws of physics, in the broken mirror of Wray’s own post-beat sense of a Coltranesque love supreme, she cuts through her own despair as if ego was a mango pit left behind, and floods in a multigenerational illuminated space where no one need fear “losing you / to happiness.”
—Jim Cohn
“Melissa Wray’s Small Gestures is a masterpiece of short free verse forms, beginning with gendered struggle involving sexual harassment, and involving an arc of struggles with the self and with others that at times ends in madness, the nature of the beast as it slouches toward its own humanity, particularly charting one woman’s efforts to chart her own course. Wray is a free-verse Sappho; her book was 16 years in the making, leading at last to a mature vision of these powerful themes. The work is fearless, illuminating even in darkness, a worthy addition to the traditions of using ‘no word that doesn’t contribute to the presentation’ while addressing themes that matter in human experience.”
— David Cope