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She Lives There Still is Mary Leader's second collection with Shearsman Books. In some senses, it is an extension of her previous Shearsman volume, Beyond the Fire, in that it reinforces what John Muckle in PN Review described as "The overall impression is of a mind that's acute, musical and subtle being brought to bear on everyday life." In other senses, it seeks radically to complicate any concept of the everyday to account for wisdom, but be warned, it is a peculiar wisdom.
The "she" of the title is from a Mother Goose rhyme, but two key series ('A Warty Chin' and 'A Withy Hut') and between them a key sequence ('Cornucopia of Arcadia') could also be called 'Crone Cards.' An initiating question asks: "And, well, should she rule for mythology / versus history? What material / difference is there?" And, well, seventy pages later, questions are still being asked: "Who are we, so / physically new?"
Throughout, the reader will encounter Leader's characteristic passions for form and for variety. But the book also affords a tightly organized demonstration of what The New Yorker called Leader's "quite remarkable sensibility, which is one of the most self-possessed in contemporary poetry.
About the author
Mary Leader is the author of five collections of poems. The first two won major awards in the United States, the National Poetry Series and the Iowa Poetry Prize. In the United Kingdom, her publisher is Shearsman Books. The Distaff Side is her third book at Shearsman. For many years, Leader practiced law in her native state of Oklahoma, first as an Assistant Attorney General and later as a Referee for the Oklahoma Supreme Court. She then parlayed herself into a career in academics, earning a PhD in English and American Literature from Brandeis University and going on to teach, at Emory University, University of Memphis, then Purdue University, where she is now Professor Emerita. Subject to homesickness all along the way, Mary Leader retired from active teaching and returned to Oklahoma. Having survived oral cancer, she now reads and writes poetry full-time.
