With these erasures, created from Nabokov's LOLITA, Olivia Pierce Graham has written a gorgeous manuscript where the author's voice shines just as brilliantly as the source material. This is a beautifully strong first collection from a talented emerging poet.

"It takes both bravery and boldness to shape poems out of Nabokov’s Lolita. Olivia Pierce Graham’s GLOOM OF EXCRUCIATING DESIRES is a lit match: deft, and focused, and forceful. The unseen narrator-poet pulls apart the prose, at times a participant and at times an observer; and the refocused fire from words left behind forms a collection that explores its source material through poems that are in parts judicious and sorrowful, but ultimately hopeful. With these poems, the extract of ore from a hot burning fire, we can feel the poetic justice and envision a world where Lo is thriving in the literary afterlife. And seeing Lo succeed is a testimony to Graham’s poems, and the reshaping of words which finally brought her there." - Jane-Rebecca Cannarella, author of Better Bones, Thirst & Frost