Review

"Unless I tell you you will never know never even know my name." This riveting declaration comes in the final line of the opening of Indelible. Becky Gould Gibson's ensuing collection is apocryphal, retelling the story of Lydia of Thyatira--regarded as the first convert to Christianity and by many as a saint. In Gibson's able hands, 'Lydia' takes her place as these figurations, as an apostle, and simply as a woman with a story previously unheard. Borrowing from feminist interpretation of Christian text, Gibson's sequence of dramatic monologues answers the opening poem's challenge. Through Indelible's finely wrought poems, the 'Lydian woman' is given not only a name but a history, a voice, and flesh.
--Shara McCallum, author of Madwoman
To tell this story in verse, Becky Gould Gibson dons masks--personae in Latin--to give an unnamed and exceptional woman in history her due, along with the "named and unnamed sisters/tossed on the bone heap" of the Bible, the now, and every era. "Lydia," a seller of luxury pur- ple cloth, speaks with Ms. Magazine and Christianity Today, aches for companionship, cross-examines herself and reveals fiery relationships with Paul, her mom, her buyer, her supplier, The Dead Saint and her own faith. Even the voice of a Road- Stone chimes in to support her. "Who has the best story?" she demands. With impishness, heart, respect and scholarship, Indelible makes her voice heard.
-- JoAnn Balingit, author of Words for House Story and Former Poet Laureate of Delaware