Booklaunch/Party for Anneysa Gaille's ONCE UPON A CICADA MOON (Tender Buttons Press 2025) May 1st 7pm @ Torn Page
Once Upon a Cicada Moon is an alchemical mix of folklore, ballad, and long form poem. Anneysa Gaille's debut is a channeled feminist tale that invents new ways to score voice on the page, full of lacy gaps to let in breath, to breathe in the bayou.
“With her poetry, Anneysa lassoes the moon and brings it down to dance amongst the bluebonnets and bayous of Texas.” —Anne Waldman
"In this exhilarating poem, words seem to slide across the page, and what we find as we move through it are the traces of a powerful and mysterious desire. Anneysa Gaille is an heir to the expansive American long poem as it comes down from Walt Whitman, C.D. Wright, and Alice Notley." —Orlando Reade
"Once Upon a Cicada Moon is tender, haunted, and charming as hell. I loved sinking down through the openings of its lovely shapes, where I became one of the book's creatures, stalking low in the grass among cicadas, mockingbirds, a weeping muse, and a charismatic devil (in "snakeskin boots with gorgons guarding each hoof"). Anneysa Gaille has brought forth a world as alive and mysterious as any Texan landscape." —Taisia Kitaiskaia