Amanda’s debut poetry chapbook, Heartbreak Autopsy, is available for preorder now from Animal Heart Press.
Amanda McLeod’s debut poetry chapbook, Heartbreak Autopsy, begins with a tornado and ends with CPR. In between, McLeod avoids the usual sentimentality associated with love and heartbreak, and instead applies her keen observation and almost clinical language to dissect relationships with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. In the landscape of love poetry, these poems are unique in their refusal to look away or romanticize the so-called unhappy endings. As a feminist author, McLeod also invites the reader to reimagine the expectations of women in terms of love, marriage, family, and self-sacrifice. “I’m the new Holly Golightly with a heavy step and unkempt hair; my mean reds are stormcloud grey, opaque. If I give heartbreak a name it’ll stick around, so I’ll make something up.” There’s a heartbreak story for everyone in this collection, a poem that will be like looking in the mirror and seeing “the truth of what you are / when you’re not on fire.”
What people are saying about Heartbreak Autopsy:
“Heartbreak Autopsy shimmers with heat and hurt, damage and disillusionment. McLeod writes fearless poetry which is sometimes startling, often beautiful, and always straight-talking. These poems are unsentimental, poignant and raw, demonstrating a deep understanding of the vagaries of the human heart.”
—Amanda Huggins, author of The Collective Nouns for Birds
and All Our Squandered Beauty
““Putting on protective gear means admitting you know what you’re about to do could hurt you,” Amanda McLeod warns in Heartbreak Autopsy. Well, shrug into your hi-vis vest, strap on a helmet, and buckle up. This collection is a little bit anything-is-possible summer and a little bit tornado through your small town.”
—Lannie Stabile, author of Good Morning to Everyone
Except Men Who Name Their Dogs Zeus
“These poems are pearls—some cultured, others wild. At the heart of each sits life’s grit; seeding specks of passion, fury, joy and pain, around which McLeod has fashioned something quite special.”
—Benjamin Dodds, author of Airplane Baby Banana Blanket
“In Amanda McLeod’s remarkable and devastating Heartbreak Autopsy, you may find yourself dropped into the middle of a storm—you’ve got the ruby slippers, but the winds refuse to subside. As a bearing element, it’s perfection for what’s to come. Then, assured that there is no eye—no I—only the collective grief of loving and losing in a whirlwind, the inundation gathers personal elements that manage to ring universal, Bob Seger and cold beers, Holly Golightly, a hula dancer on the dash of a ’67 Chevy, baseball, and Ariadne. It is a journey that presents a uniquely compelling interrogation of how chiseling the “self” from the extraneous elements of interconnection can be violent, but ultimately a defining process.”
—Kari Flickinger, author of The Gull and the Bell Tower
Amanda McLeod Writes 