Glass Jaw

Winner of the 2023 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry, Glass Jaw is a gripping, Dantaen rendering of a young woman's physical and spiritual trials in the boxing ring.

Striking and big-hearted, Glass Jaw depicts the grit and glamor of women’s boxing based on the poet's time training as a fighter in New York City. Beginning on the ropes, fighting back against the limitations of gender, Raisa Tolchinsky situates us within the dynamic context of the boxing gym, through both a chorus of named women boxers and a single fighter battling for her selfhood. In a Dantean reimagining, we follow the boxer as she descends into the hellish “rings” of an abusive relationship with her coach. In a count-down from 34 to 1, sputtering at times, the fighter gets closer and closer to the heart of her brutal, solitary metamorphosis. Winner of the 2023 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry, Glass Jaw explores a quest as spiritual as it is physical through poems that are muscular, musical, ecstatic.