Laura Kasischke's dark myths return to us here more frightening and more exciting than ever.
"She has, like all good poets, created a music of her own, one suited to her concerns. When denizens of the 22nd century, if we get there, look back on our era and ask how we lived, they will take an interest both in the strangest personalities who gave their concerns verbal form, and in the most representative. The future will not-should not-see us by one poet alone. But if there is any justice in that future, Kasischke is one of the poets it will choose." -Boston Review
"Kasichke's poems are powered by a skillful use of imagery and the subtle, ingenious way she turns a phrase." -Austin American-Statesman
Laura Kasischke in her own words: "I realized while ordering and selecting the poems for this collection that much of my more recent work concerns body parts, dresses, and beauty queens. These weren't conscious decisions, just the things that found their way into my poems at this particular point in my life, and which seem to have attached to them a kind of prophetic potential. The beauty queens especially seemed to crowd in on me, in all their feminine loveliness and distress, wearing their physical and psychological finery, bearing what body parts had been allotted to them. For some time, I had been thinking about beauty queens like Miss Michigan, but also the Rhubarb Queen, and the Beauty Queens of abstraction-congeniality. And then-Brevity, Consolation for Emotional Damages, Estrogen-all these feminine possibilities to which I thought a voice needed to be given."
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[Dress of dreams and portents worn / in memory, despite / the posted warnings , sunk deeply into the damp / sand / all along the shore (NEW DRESS) ***(Ausable Press, 25 December 2012, first published 2007, ebook, 80 pages, borrowed from the National Poetry Library)
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I read the author's YA novel, The Raising many years ago. I'd no idea she wrote poetry as well. Intrigued by the blurb and the cover I decided to give this collection a shot. I'm glad I did. Kasischke is a talented poet. Lillies Without contains the kinds of poems I prefer to read. They are rich in imagery and detail, lush and un-forgetful. I particularly enjoyed The Bad Teacher, I Am the Coward Who Did Not Pick Up the Phone, Elegy, Miss Post-Apocalypse and Miss January. I enjoyed every poem in this collection and would definitely read more of her work.
