Opening Bundling feels like opening a cedar chest full of not only herstorical truths, and residue from elements once lived, but full also of the internal her-stories as yet untold. Woods uses collages, images, calligraphy, found texts and timely documents to bring the pass-ed voices into the living now. Violations and violences upon Her body are fully present, as well as the blood and gore of inhabiting female form: "with heath/ aether rich soil/a smoldering scent/ Her body/ cinders."
j/j hastain, Author of Priest/ess
Bundling is a vibrant powerhouse, at once fresh and ancient, sensuous and reverent. Heather Woods bears witness to society's inhumanities while defending the sanctity of all beings in this collection. These poems move deftly between traditional forms such as couplet, illumination, persona, opus, and historical narrative into experimental hybrid, protest, and prayers for protection of the oppressed. Sonic rhapsodies, ingenious wordplay, and tantric unions provide divine sustenance as euphoric scenery and radiant tenderness shelter us through the night. This book is an exquisite treasure.
Lisa Panepinto, Author of Where I Come From the Fish Have Souls
Heather Woods's Bundling understands how intimate strands of language hold us in anticipation for pleasure. Each poem is tightly wound to feel each intricate fiber, each delectable pulse. Here content is woven with form to conjure the tradition of bundling. As she quotes Hélène Cixous, "Real love is a / don't touch, yet still an / almost-touching. / A phantom touching," the real longing occurs within the lingering haunts of sensuality. As readers we are also just beyond grasp of physicality that leaves us enchanted by her text.
C. M. Chady, Author of Embodied Unconscious: the feminine space of sexuality, surrealism, and experimentation in literature
Bundling by Heather Woods is a master work, a tome of more than four hundred pages of sensually charged poetry exploring Bundling: to sleep in the same bed fully clothed, a custom formerly practiced in New England and the British Isles.
Michael Basinski, Author of Tub Bunny
Heather Woods unveils the polite yet brutal custom of "bundling," surreptitiously revealing lust and its lush curtain of seduction, as it becomes clear that bundling, cruel as it may have been, represents the art of foreplay, which goes on subtly and secretly, initiating true caution, true fear, true as guardians of the heart/mind/body on the ornate precipice of desire-that ornateness represented in the elaborate design of this remarkable book, an extravagantly illustrated volume. Weaving together (beyond mere bundling) external texts with her own poetry, Woods writes demurely sensuous poems which can't help but entice us into a very satiating reading experience.
Rebecca Goodman, Author of Forgotten Night
Congratulations on this amazing tome, so rich in thought, word, sound, dharma, serious wit.
O kindred Spirit!
'We have ignorantly slumbered and pray the fierce lions rise'-a glorious rousing incentive crouched within the ethos of the formidable Heather Woods. All praise.
Anne Waldman, Author of Sanctuary
