Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation

“This new full-length collection of poetry by Marjorie Maddox is extraordinary. Maddox makes poems that pull the world inside out: the hidden becomes apparent, the spiritual palpable, the heart, that sock stuffed in the chest, gives rise to ‘the architecture of mercy.’ Examining, in a variety of moods, both the dazzling intricacy and the frightening fragility of the human body, Maddox never forgets the heart at the heart of the matter.” —Kelly Cherry





“In poems that survey the ‘body’s landscape,’ then raise their ‘hallelujah torrent’ to celebrate ‘the human beneath,’ Marjorie Maddox allows faith—in language that aspires toward prayer—to balance the sorrow and ‘stubbed joy’ that inform ‘the world we live in/and the world beyond.’ These poems acknowledge the body and its betrayals with clarity, humor, and Whitmanian fervor. This is a book of fierce and eloquent consolations.” —Michael Waters





“Passionate, heartfelt documentaries of a life that is full, and filling, and reaching for true purpose.” —Scott Cairns





“ ...Marjorie Maddox’s father, who, as she recounts in the reissued poetry collection Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation, receives a heart transplant from a dead stranger: “His heart is buried / in my father, / who is buried.”


“ At the end of the poem “After the Transplant,” Maddox discloses what I’ve felt as well, even when it’s down to palliative care and hospice: “the dying die to soon.” We still want that distance between us and illness, between us and death.”


“...Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation—are each worth reading on their own, for the distinctive story of illness, for the sharp perspective, and for the original voice. If you’ve seen one, you’ve not seen them all. Each is a really good book in its own right. Together, they are an imperative, a call for compassion for each other.”


---Anna Leahy, Guest Contributor, as featured in Entropy





“Cracking open this book feels akin to witnessing the split sternum. Wondrous workings. Visceral shocks. Dark, intricate passages. Maddox speaks to us “out of the nicked vision that splinters.”


“Dissected into five sections, Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation vibrates with muscle and music, wordplay and riddle, occasional ode—even moments of farce. The reader acutely senses “the jolt that joins us at the organs.” Several startling and ingenious shape poems emerge.”


“A poet of fierce curiosity, Maddox incrementally parses daily life and loss through art and science underscored by faith. Courageous beholding evokes the becoming. I’m still savoring her sleight of hand—and heart. The sinewy energy and the hush.”


---Laurie Klein, Whale Road Review





“Marjorie Maddox’s latest, exquisite poetry collection, Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation, filters the hope, heartbreak, joys, and frustrations of life through the lens of a shattering event in the poet’s life: Her father’s failed heart transplant.”


“Maddox marries imagery with narration that guides the reader through carefully crafted and nuanced emotion.”


“Maddox’s lyricism is stunning throughout, and the closing poem “Tape of My Dead Father’s Voice from an Old Answering Machine” displays her remarkable ability to express the delicate nature of grief without being sentimental. In a matter-of-fact tone, she writes of hearing his answering-machine message, after he’s died:


He keeps telling me he’s not at home,


that he’ll reply soon. He doesn’t know


he’s lying…”


---Amy L. George, The Curator Magazine review





"Maddox is one of those truly exceptional poets who is able to, through her own experiences and imagination, dip sincerely into a variety of readers’ messy heart brains, authentically exploring and animating even the most platitude-prone topics. . . . Throughout the collection, Maddox embraces our human emotions and astutely translates them into palpable moments. Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation is performed with absolute eloquence.”


—Heather Lang Cassera, World Literature Editor, The Literary Review