Red Studio

by Mary Cornish

Winner of the 2006 FIELD Poetry Prize, Red Studio is a collection of startling lyricism, vivid sensuality, and keen precision. Cornish’s poems tell about life and art and their interdependence. They are fierce, funny, and filled with a love of the world that acknowledges candidly how precarious it is--or rather, how brief our time in it must be.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published March 1, 2007

Reviews

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some amazing stuff--the language is super condensed, the themes beautiful and well-researched. There are a few duds in this collection (mostly having to do with Egyptian tombs), but a lot of the poems dazzle quietly. My favorites include "Cut Flowers," "The Art of Misdirection," "The angel of silence is flying over us," "Household Alchemy," and "Sideshow."

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of poems that deserves more readers!

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been on my list since it was recommended by Phillip B. Williams for some of its innovation in sonnets and related forms. These are carefully constructed poems on a wide range of topics from art and music, to ritual and sexuality, to science and physical law. Always there is a fascination with the way human order creates beauty and restrains the ways our bodies impel us and fail us.
There are many sonnet-like poems here, all metrically beautiful. I learned a great deal from the way in which
variations of length and stanzas reinforce meaning. I loved how many of the poems (often 16 lines with two symmetrical stanzas) had a center which became an attractor of attention and focus, as well as the traditional turn towards the ending, A highlight was “Fifteen Moving Parts,” a fourteen line sonnet describing an ancient Chinese box; the sonnet having 14 little prose poems dedicated to each of the 14 lines in a way reminiscent of a haibun.
These poems are like browsing a museum of objects of extraordinary beauty and artifacts reflecting the wide array of ways human beings make sense of themselves and the world.

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting which was good because this book was very hard to find. I had taken a liking to a poem called "Numbers" read on a podcast and went in search of which book it was in and then went searching for the book. It didn't disappoint, although, "Numbers" is still my favorite in this collection.

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why don’t I read more poetry???

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Red Studio has quite a few poems inspired by works of art and museum pieces, particularly Egyptian and Japanese. The feel of the book is studied and archival in the detail with which the poet looks at and experiences her environment.