Synopses & Reviews
This is the second book of poems by a powerful, compassionate, and fiercely intelligent poet who writes about the boundaries between life and death, sickness and health, body and spirit. Gregerson's theme is our formidable encounter with mortality - the assaults of disease and bodily harm, the gradations of material and psychic well-being, domestic treachery, self-slaughter, failures of mind. Her emphasis is always on the resourcefulness of the human spirit, the intelligence of the body, the abundant loveliness of the created world. What readers will love about these poems - many of them centered on young children - is their combination of straightforwardness and complexity. Linda Gregerson is not an ordinary believer, but the rhythms and icons of faith pervade her work. Readers will also relish the music of Gregerson's poems and the remarkable use of line breaks and patterns on the page, which give her poems aesthetic as well as moral authority. These are not light verses, far from it
Synopsis
Mark Strand called these poems "among the very best being written." Bravely exploring the ways in which we encounter mortality, they emphasize the resourcefulness of the human spirit, the intelligence of the body, the abundant beauty of the created world. Devotional, even celebratory in their cadence, they move with the gravity of high art.
About the Author
LINDA GREGERSON is the author of Waterborne, The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep, and Fire in the Conservatory. She teaches Renaissance literature and creative writing at the University of Michigan. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry as well as in the Atlantic, Poetry, Ploughshares, the Yale Review, TriQuarterly, and other publications. Among her many awards and honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, four Pushcart Prizes, and a Kingsley Tufts Award.