The Urge to Believe - noted by Left Bank Books

Left Bank Books has picked The Urge to Believe is Stronger than Belief Itself as a 'recommended pick' in its July newsletter. A short review by Left Bank staff member Erin Quick:

St. Louis poet Erin M. Bertram's latest chapbook, The Urge to Believe is Stronger than Belief Itself, is a collection of prose poems grounded in the experience of dealing with cancer--namely breast cancer, though it largely goes unnamed in the book. With a daughter's kind, eager eye, she looks at what safety can be found in a name, gleaned from the seeming order of definition (whether from a dictionary or medical pamphlet) even when faced with the treachery of meaning. From the opening lines of Rilke to the book's final words, the solid actuality of language belies our frankly human experience of loss and its echo, pain. In such a world, where we are always reaching, even our mother's breasts bear the fragility of existence. In such a world, "any change is worth noting."