Wilder’s authentic and emotive writing is both an embrace and a withdrawal.– Independent Book Review
A Tom Lombardo Poetry Selection
Published by Press 53
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Purchase options
Publisher: Press53
Local bookstore: Scuppernong Books, Greensboro, NC
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Online retailer: Amazon (If you can, please support the small businesses listed above. BUT you can leave a review on Amazon even if you don’t purchase there. Reviews helps spread the word. Thanks!)
Reviews for Anything That Happens
“[Anything That Happens is] a potent collection that invites readers to walk in Cheryl’s shoes. And, it provides traction for assessing and moving beyond these poignant and powerful moments of quiet desperation.”
—D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review (Link to full review forthcoming May 2021.)
“The poems in Anything that Happens puzzle together the emotions of life, fitting words into sharp, emotive slivers that pierce a heart with empathy.”
—Independent Book Review (Link to full review forthcoming May 2021.)
“I don’t know that I have ever heard of a book of poetry being called a page-turner, but I opened it when it arrived in the mail, expecting to just take a quick peek and read the rest as I had more time, and ended up sitting down and devouring it. Just gorgeous.”
From the cover
“The difficult story of what follows a terrible accident in Anything That Happens has me thinking about the word aftermath, how it means not only dire consequences but second-growth, as new grass after a harvest. Cheryl Wilder’s poems are almost shatteringly direct: they explore guilt and suffering so cleanly and so precisely that every detail testifies, and mercy is ever possible. This is a brave and honorable book.”
—Nancy Eimers, author of Oz
“Anything That Happens is a mature poetic inquiry into the ways early trauma can reverberate through the whole of a life—relationships, family, one’s sense of self. The poems are candid, sharp-edged and very well rendered. You can taste “the bone in the broth” here as Wilder works through the maze of emotion. In the end, we witness change and redemption, but the psychic weight remains. As she aptly describes it: ‘I am two people now— // the before and the after; one I’ve already forgotten, // the other I have not met.’”
—Mark Cox, author of Readiness: Prose Poems
Virtual Book Launch March 23, 2021
Book description
At the age of twenty, Cheryl Wilder got behind the wheel when she was too drunk to drive. She emerged from the car physically whole. Her passenger, a close friend, woke up from a coma four months later with a life-changing brain injury. Anything That Happens follows her journey from a young adult consumed by shame and self-hatred to a woman she can live with… and even respect. Along the way, Wilder marries, has a son, divorces, and cares for her dying mother. Anything That Happens examines what it takes to reconcile a past marked by a grave mistake, a present as caregiver to many, and a future that stretches into one long second chance.
