The Woman Downstairs

Poetry. Winner of the 1994 A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry. In THE WOMAN DOWNSTAIRS, eloquence joins intimately with an attentive and hungry eye. Julie Bruck explores the accidents and acquaintances of life, its small coincidences and occurrences, its unexpected meetings. With a passionate distance, Bruck blends the outside observer's cool embrace with a desire to know intensely life's eccentric smallnesses, to gentle the beautiful out of the mundane. By turns witty and thoughtful, Bruck's writing is always graceful, always a delight.

"These are remarkable poems—smart, lucid and honest. Bruck catches the small private moments of people around her—a family in a café, a neighbour watering the lawn, a parking lot attendant holding the keys—and transforms them into poems that resonate with meaning and desire. Some of her lines are so luminous, they seem on the verge of turning into light."—Lorna Crozier

In The Woman Downstairs, eloquence joins intimately with an attentive and hungry eye. Julie Bruck explores the accidents and acquaintances of life, its small coincidences and occurrences, its unexpected meetings. With a passionate distance, Bruck blends the outside observer's cool embrace with a desire to know intensely life's eccentric smallnesses, to gentle the beautiful out of the mundane. By turns witty and thoughtful, Bruck's writing is always graceful, always a delight.

Julie Bruck is the author of MONKEY RANCH (2012), THE END OF TRAVEL (1999), and THE WOMAN DOWNSTAIRS (1993). Her recent work has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Maisonneuve, The Malahat Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review and The Walrus, among other publications. A Montreal native, she lives in San Francisco with her husband and daughter.