The remembrance of our Bessies, our cultural mirrors, is sacred in Kimberly Collins’ hands. In Bessie’s Resurrection, her poems urge us to commune with the pain, the irreverence, and the “moaning” trouble of life as only spirited poetry can. —Joanne V. Gabbin
 
Kimberly Collins’ three Bessies have the quintessential three b’s of the blues in common: bawdiness, bodaciousness, and beautiful odes to love, lust, and life—and to the audacious ladies she so eloquently brings to life with poems and portraits imbued with such élan, elegance, musical muscularity, and grace. These gospels put a spell on you: from the literate to the profane they make the insane sane and the ugly beautiful again. —Tony Medina