Subterranean: Poems

Jill Bialosky follows her acclaimed debut collection, The End of Desire, with this powerful sequence of poems that probes the subterranean depths of eros. Gerald Stern has called Bialosky “the poet of the secret garden, the place, at once, of grace and sadness,” and here she enters that garden again, blending the classical with the contemporary in bold considerations of desire, fertility, virginity, and childbirth. Written against the idealizations of romantic love and motherhood, she tells of the loss of one child and the birth of another, the fierce passions of life before children, the seductions of suicide, and the comforts of art. Throughout, she braids and unbraids the distinct yet often inseparable themes of motherhood, love, and sexuality. “When he comes to me,” she writes,

half-filled glass

in his hand, wanting

me to touch him, I hear

you stir in your crib. I know what your body      

  feels like.

The soft skin of a flower, not bruised, not yet

  in torment . . .

Subterranean is the moving and intimate account of the emergence of a female psyche. Like the figures of Persephone and Demeter, who appear in various forms in these poems, Bialosky finds a strange beauty in grief, and emerges from the realms of temptation with insight and distinction.

From the Hardcover edition.

Frank, wistful poems that probe the subterranean depths of eros, and chronicle the emergence of a female psyche. "With a tone and an integrity that are consistent and sure, " writes Louis McKee in Library Journal, "and an aesthetic that is varied and original, these poems touch on fragile moments and dark comers . . . Bialosky finds the beauty in grief." And the St. Louis Post-Dispatch says "Bialosky recounts skillfully her experiences, desires, and imaginings. Her grief (on the loss of a child), temptation, longing and other emotions are expressed with a classical elegance."

Jill Bialosky was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She studied at Ohio University and received a Master of Arts from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa. Her first book, The End of Desire, was published by Knopf in 1997, and her poems appear regularly in journals such as Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Agni Review, and The New Republic. Bialosky is an editor at W. W. Norton and teaches at Columbia University; she lives in New York City with her husband and son.

From the Hardcover edition.