Towards the Forest
New Rivers Press (2007)
Edgy and lyrical expressions of the human heart set in a landscape of palms and avocados, of ocean and forest, of Hollywood billboards and noir passion, Holaday Mason’s poetry is haunted and nocturnal, with broken dreaming and falling blossoms, an erotic and dangerous and beautiful place, a world dark and graceful. She writes with extravagant passion and unflinching nerve.
Praise for Towards the Forest
“Reading Holaday Mason's Towards the Forest, one feels in the hands of someone driven, someone who knows her way around the interior life of the mind and the imagination, one who takes risks and is brave. There's not a false note or false step, each emotion deeply felt and ringing true. In images memorable and sharp as cut-glass, she lays down her ‘beauties’ in ways that reverberate, leading us to a finish that surprises—like the cop hidden behind the billboard—because we didn't expect truth's reckoning to be waiting there for us. My impression on first reading this collection and with each subsequent reading was ‘Wow! This is poetry.’”
—Alice Friman
“Holaday Mason bravely explores the interior life of the mind and imagination . . . the poems ravel, unravel as hauntingly as Kodaly or Bartok.”
—Sarah Maclay