Lisa Russ Spaar
Lisa Russ Spaar is the author of over ten books, most recently Orexia: Poems (2017) and the forthcoming Madrigalia: New & Selected Poems (2021). Her honors include a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and an NEH Distinguished Professorship. Her “Second Acts” column on second books of poetry is a regular feature at the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is professor and director of creative writing at the University of Virginia.
Reading List
Of Wilde Marjerome
Of Wilde Marjerome “ministered against the swooning of the heart” Gerard’s Herball, Johnson ed., 1636 In accent austral & thick with plummet, a balmy arctic late November fragrance, womanly but in my love’s voice, its deepest draught I huffed, a girl, in pantry spice closet of my ancestors, whetted concoctions brandied in bowls, jars of […]
Of Mistletoe
“berries so clear a man may see through them” after Gerard’s Herball, 1597 Parasitic black globes hung against dusk float, beheaded and strung-up skulls in arms of the skeletal oak they eat tonight, along with the last solstice light, a desperate silver. Had my shotgun now, I’d shoot some down for you, said a man […]