Blue Venus

In Blue Venus, Lisa Russ Spaar explores the intimate relationship between the sensual and the sacred. Her nocturnal poems weave themselves into the very fabric of private fervor--lyric, sexual, spiritual--beginning with "Dusk" and continuing on until "Dawn." Fierce and giving, Spaar's exquisite verse isolates essential moments of vulnerability and wonder. A series on insomnia--in the voices of some notable insomniacs--is among the most moving extended sequences in recent memory. Elsewhere, she traces poetry back to its primordial roots--prayer, lullabye, mourning, exaltation. Propelled throughout by a resolute belief in the relationship between the human and the cosmic Blue Venus is "a brilliant new star in poetry's firmament" (Carol Muske-Dukes).

Lisa Russ Spaar directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia. The recipient of a Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers, she is the author of two poetry chapbooks and Glass Town, a full-length collection; and the editor of Acquainted with the Night, an anthology of poems about insomnia. Her poetry has appeared in many periodicals, including Poetry, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly Review.