In a sentimental mood

In this brave and fresh poetry with (no) sentimental mood, “the bIeeding/ is what’s/ in the middle”—between the comfort and the disaster, the laugh and the cry, the joy and the sadness, the tenderness and the cruelty, the peace and the war, the summer atmosphere and the grave stones, the Eros and the Thanatos, the ethics and the esthetics, between the life and the death. —Lidija Dimkovska, author of A Spare Life and ph Neutral History. Ivana Bodrožić’s In a Sentimental Mood is emotional, but never woeful, deliberate, yet playful, poetry capable of reaching both the highest and deepest registers of expression. From abstract jazz-inspired musings to bedroom intimacies, these poems converse with the idea that being alone is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. To lose your dignity and the dignity of your words—that is the worst thing.