Know Thy Audience by Nadia de Vries Alan Felsenthal The phrase "the distaff side"

The phrase "the distaff side" also refers to the maternal branch in genealogy

There are moving elegies here for what has departed

and succeeds in helping us at least try to understand human frailties

It features an assorted cast: lovers and sisters

but instead an extraordinary ability to render our home the alien planet it is

Know Thy Audience by Nadia de Vries Alan Felsenthal The phrase "the distaff side"Know Thy Audience, Nadia de Vries's third poetry collection, disavows the platitude from which it takes its name and makes the reader complicit in both her aggression and her submission, sparked by a history of domestic abuse that escapes all euphemism and metaphor but not poetry altogether. Speaking or rather, singing as a 'battered woman' from a working class neighborhood, De Vries' aphoristic writing belies a vengeful reversal of roles in which the