Woman before an aquarium

by Patricia Hampl

Her first book.

91 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Patricia Hampl is an American memoirist, writer, lecturer, and educator. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis and is one of the founding members of the Loft Literary Center.

Reviews

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hampl’s early work, exploring her Czech heritage, chronicling her coming of age, and learning how to craft poems.

Favorite Poems:
“Fortune-Tellers”
“Elegy and Drawings”
“The Day’s Chores: A List”
“Flowers in a Waterford Decanter”
“Galena, the Future”
“To a Czech Exile”

[Olivia Davidson · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars! loved “piano” and “flowers in a life”

[Abbi Dion]

A Bonnard head, but not in a garden; round,
simple, one ringing globe in the city
of forty times forty golden church towers.
I dreamed that same dream:
you have your singing sisters,
they wear Chinese silk,
their weedy skirts are marbled
like endpapers in a rare book on birds.
They swirl because this is underwater.
We sing in water.