ARCHIVE SERIES
isn’t devotion, by Duhita Cori Kresge
Fall 2019
“For 13 years, my family was involved in a spiritual cult that completely consumed me, enchanted me, and would have gradually destroyed me. At the age of 18 I was suddenly and mysteriously expelled. isn't devotion is a tiny shrine for grieving the death of my young faith. This death is final. I have made sure of that. I wrote these poems to give myself reentry into a world that locked me out. This chapbook is a trespass through divinity, a torch song for disbelief, and a cautious attempt at forgiveness.”
—Duhita Cori Kresge on isn’t devotion:
“Cori Kresge’s debut is a heady incense, a seductive refusal to tell all, even as she spills her guts. Like a devotee “smelling roses while bleeding to death” Kresge illuminates our society’s ambivalence about secular individualism just as we feel it reaching a fever pitch. Two ideological roses — the desire to please God and the desire to do what we please — war over a girl’s body in poems that sumptuously portray the unknowable quality of cult life. I’m reminded of that handy Julian Barnes quote, “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him” as I read isn’t devotion because the longing for faith, and the ways yearning and ritual is commodified outside of religious communities, is laid bare in this gorgeous and too-short book.”
—Monica McClure, author of Tender Data
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