"This is poetry both luscious and rigorous."-Lynn Emanuel

This latest collection from the young but already established luminary Larissa Szporluk is cause for celebration. Szporluk has proven once again that she not only deserves her elevated status in the poetry world, but reinvents and advances it with each new collection.

This is spare, sly, seductive, and haunting poetry that resonates long after the rustle of the page. Szporluk has an uncanny ability to hone her words until their edges slice like small, deep paper cuts, whittling away at the human experience, searching for the truth of things.

Despite her three previously published-and much heralded-works, this visionary poet continues to innovate. She remains completely unpredictable, as if these visceral poems lead her to extraordinary places of their own volition. She writes of mother-son relationships, political and social events-always with an underlying mythic aspect, and always demonstrating an undeniable faith in the human spirit.

Larissa Szporluk is the author of three books of poetry: Dark Sky Question, winner of the Barnard College Poetry Prize; Isolato, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize; and The Wind, Master Cherry, the Wind. She received a 1998 Rona Jaffe Writers' Award, and her poems have been widely anthologized in The Best American Poetry 1999, The Beacon Best of 1999, New American Voices, and Young American Poets. She is assistant professor of creative writing and literature at Bowling Green State University.