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Praise for Dorianne Laux"Throughout the years...Dorianne Laux has not faltered. She has wrestled with the angels and with the serpents; Eros and Thanatos are wrestling still, and the sound they make is the sound of this woman singing."
-Marie Howe"[Dorianne Laux is] one of our best, who never stops paying attention, and is never unwilling, and summons from her readers unwavering trust."
-Mark Doty"Dorianne Laux is one of those poets I turn to again and again for cradling beauty and darkness so close together in a poem."
-Aimee Nezhukumatathil"The poetry of Dorianne Laux is essential."
-Nick Flynn"A prodigious imagination that somehow manages to sift through the ordinary, quotidian, and squalid realities of our world, to produce moments of grace and shimmering beauty, and empathetic illumination. Dorianne Laux is a national treasure, a poet of immense insight and masterful craft."
-Kwame Dawes"In a vast ocean of too-much-to-read out there, I can always find an island of sanity in Laux's work, and within individual poems, always, always spots of light and breath and truth."
-Lia Purpura"Dorianne Laux [writes] about love and violence, survival and grief, in poems that are clear, compelling and insightful.... [She] shows us how to endure hardships without losing humanity and compassion."
-Elizabeth Lund, Washington Post"Beyond her admirable tenacity and spirit, Laux is just plain wise-and refreshingly unpretentious in her wisdom."
-Jonathan Russell Clark, Vulture
About the author
Dorianne Laux’s poetry collections include Only as the Day Is Long, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; The Book of Men, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize; and Facts about the Moon, winner of the Oregon Book Award. She is the coauthor of The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. A founding faculty member of Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA Program, she lives in Richmond, California.
Summary
Longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry One of the New Yorker's Best Books of 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist Dorianne Laux returns with an insightful, compassionate, and spirited volume that celebrates the imperfect miracle of humanity.