Advance Praise for
The Body Taken

“An engrossing, multivalent book, The Body Taken is as much an elegy
for lost friendship as it is a collection of brilliant ekphrastic poems on
the work of Francesca Woodman, the influential photographer who died
tragically at 22. Lisa Beech Hartz explores art’s transformative processes
fearlessly, and through poems of intellectual clarity and emotional power,
photographer and poet each emerge an Everywoman, the specificity of
their images and experiences paradoxically leading to the universal.”
—John Hennessy, author of Exit Garden State
“Lisa Beech Hartz writes with a language so precise the poems feel carved
out of history with a spooky clarity. Hartz responds to the photographs
of Francesca Woodman as a way to reclaim the existence of women who
disappear even as they are present. To call these poems ekphrastic is to
diminish the genius of their scope. Hartz’s eye does not merely sharpen

the art of Woodman’s photos, it calls the photos into being and inter-
sperses them among the poet, the poet’s mother, and a girlhood friend.”

—Jessica Cuello, author of Yours, Creature
“In these unflinching and finely wrought poems, Lisa Beech Hartz tends
to the forces that burnish and diminish the body: the reveries of youth,
a cancer diagnosis, love’s gravity, the intimacies of grief. The emotional

power of these poems is amplified by the resonant and gorgeous lan-
guage. These poems are heart-rich, deftly written. Hartz is an immensely

gifted poet, and this collection is remarkable.”

—Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine

“The Body Taken is haunting. In a gorgeous sequence of lyrics and era-
sures, Lisa Beech Hartz resurrects the mysterious life and photography

of Francesca Woodman. We wander the poems and the poems wander
us, asking, ‘Girl. Where have you been? Her slim arms gesture toward a
half-/open door, all darkness within.’ Like all the best ekphrasis, Hartz’s
poems not only bring art and artist to life but take us beyond them.
Woodman and her spectral self-portraits converse with Hartz’s own
moving meditations on girlhood, coming of age, loss, illness, danger and
desire. ‘I find myself parsing calamity,’ the poet notes. ‘What is a woman
for?’ Each poem sets loose a series of ghosts and girls who appear and
disappear before our eyes, unforgettable and forever out of reach.”
—Kirun Kapur, author of Women in the Waiting Room