Patterns of Animus: Poetry, with Accompanying Essays and Reviews

by Rochelle Owens, Susan Smith Nash (Editor)

"Patterns of Animus" is award-winning poet and playwright Rochelle Owens's stunning new long poem. In it, she captures the two often oppositional processes of Modernism and Postmodernism in her work. On the one hand, her weaving, incantatory rhythms and the reflexive nature of her subject matter, clearly take on the constructive act of developing the poem’s own epistemology. On the other, however, she often dismantles the very episteme she has built, and as it is torn down, she replaces it with the process of becoming. In some cases, the “becoming” process starts as an “undoing” or dismantling.For a deeper understanding of the long poem and her body of work, this new volume contains illustrative essays, reviews, and commentary by literary critics and contemporary poets and playwrights who shine light on the fascinating darker reaches of her work. The writers include Jane Augustine, George Economou, Jackson Mac Lowe, Susan Smith Nash, Toby Olson, and Karl Young.

152 pages, Paperback

Published July 12, 2022