Synopses & Reviews
In her fifth collection, Rosanna Warren draws inspiration not only from her own life but also from the works of other artists, both classical and contemporary, real and imagined. Warren explores the political and the personal through myth, history, elegy, and erotic lyric. She eulogizes her mother in poems such as "Mediterranean," where she writes, "the mystery was / not that she walked there, ten years after her death, / / but that she vanished, and let twilight take her place--." In other poems, Warren contemplates wreckage and sorrow in family life, in Hurricane Katrina, and in the Trojan War, but also moments of eerie blessing. In her most forceful collection to date, she obsessively traces themes, both ancient and modern, in a voice compelling and deeply persuasive. from "Mediterranean"
Review
"An important poet . . . beyond the achievement of all but a double handful of living American poets." Harold Bloom
Review
"Arrestingly plainspoken, within the shimmering shapes she devises. . . . The bitter taste of that word 'expertise' conjures the sweet experiences and sensations this book often celebrates (or whose absence it laments). . . . This book represents a significant contribution to the national imaginary." Dan Chiasson
Synopsis
from "Mediterranean There was something I wanted to say, at the age of twelve, some question she hadn't answered and yesterday, so clearly seeing her pace before m it rose again to the tip of my tongue, and the mystery wa not that she walked there, ten years after her death but that she vanished, and let twilight take her place"
Synopsis
"Achieves a delicate balance between structural solidity and movement. . . . Warren's latest poems tend to veil their complexity in understatement."--
About the Author
Rosanna Warren, the author of four collections of poetry, has received awards from the Academy of Arts and Letters and has won the Lamont Poetry Prize. She teaches at the University of Chicago and lives in Chicago.