Celebrated for her exquisitely crafted poems revealing an alternate female reality, award-winning poet and bestselling author Robin Morgan gives us, in this fifth collection, her most intimate work yet
The poems gathered here trace a stunning spectrum of love, betrayal, loss, pain, rage, and survival. Skirting madness in the wake of a tempestuous relationship’s end, these poems slice language with knife-edge bitterness, but within the deliberate constraints of form. Individual poems have become famous: “Add-Water Instant Blues” is the most anthologized; “Cave Dwellers” and “Acrobats and Clowns” have been widely translated; and the various “disguised,” subtle sonnet forms throughout the book have been used to teach the art of writing poetry. Art itself becomes the healing theme, and a number of the poems here are in dialogue with other poets, including Marianne Moore, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, William Blake, and Robert Graves. The wise voice that emerges dares celebrate a quiet joy, tempered only by fire.
Award-winning poet, novelist, journalist, and feminist leader Robin Morgan has published more than twenty books, including the now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful and Sisterhood Is Global and the bestselling The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism. Her work has been translated into thirteen languages, among them Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Persian. A recipient of honors including a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, and former editor in chief of Ms., Morgan founded the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, and with Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem, cofounded the Women’s Media Center. She writes and hosts Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan, a weekly program with a global audience on iTunes and WMCLive.com—her commentaries legendary, her guests ranging from grassroots activists to Christiane Amanpour, Anita Hill, and President Jimmy Carter.