Veering from wry surrealism to ebullient slapstick, the poems in Nicole Santalucia's The Book of Dirt chronicle outrage, love, and fear, wed to the terrain and culture of southern-central Pennsylvania. In this collection, lesbians crawl out of the grave that America has been digging since its inception; these are timely poems of resistance, celebrating marriage, sobriety, and survival.

I've never read a book like The Book of Dirt. Stunning in original voice, Nicole Santalucia conjures elemental imagery that runs underground and trespasses all borders. In "Keystone Ode with Homophobia and Ground Beef in It" Santalucia writes: "What I am is not on your list of sins [...] This is how the guntothetemple says Hail Mary. / No queers get out of here alive." These poems give brilliant voice to the lives of women and what it means to survive in the middle of addiction, prison, women-hating, homophobia—in the farm fields of Pennsylvania. From the wreckage rises Santalucia's unflinching and beautiful song. This is a necessary book.

— Jan Beatty, author of Jackknife, New and Selected Poems

Nicole Santalucia's The Book of Dirt is an unsettling journey through a small-town American landscape where gun violence, homophobia, misogyny, and addiction permeate every corner, even though "there are no corners to turn." The terrain is littered with "broken hands and broken heads" and "soldiers brushing their hair with bones," but somehow Santalucia's tough, queer, and often grimly humorous voice generates a few sparks of hope that she might find or invent "a silent place to love," a place where strength derives not from violence, but from poetry. This isn't a comforting book, but why would it be.

— Mark Bibbins, author of 13th Balloon