Persuasions of Fall$12.95Ann Lauinger 80 pp., 6 x 8 1/2 Winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry Ann Lauinger The Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry was inaugurated in 2003 to honor the late poet, a nationally recognized author of numerous collections of poetry and a former professor at the University of Utah. In Persuasion of Fall, the first prizewinning volume to result from this new annual competition, Persuasions of Fall, Ann Lauinger celebrates the quotidian in ways that are wise, uncompromising, and sometimes sly in their playfulness. The Company of Fools Praise the small boom of frogs in spring woods for complicating green: leaf buds, the warbler’s breast, the glassy pond, amphibious slime. Praise the deadpan mimicry of absent masters, antic dance on laundry-line where shirts and socks relieved of bodies swell and flutter. Praise the broken eggs and praise whoever dropped them. Smooth virtue deserves a smash-- and what pleasure’s more reliable than a decent omelet? Praise the empty fist that buys safe passage through the evil wood: no maps, no money. It’s hard, learning to trust the imp in improvident. Praise surprise, that benign bomber manically bent on blowing us sky-wide. Praise his crafty sidekick, picklock laughter. Praise the company of fools. Ann Lauinger is on the literature faculty at Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems have appeared in such journals as, The Missouri Review, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, and, Rattapallax. She is winner of the 2002 Erskine J. Poetry Prize from Smartish Pace. She lives in Ossining, New York. “This is the work of a poet blessed with a sophisticated formal intelligence who treats a wide range of subjects—love and loss, architecture and music, history and myth, nature and revelation—with candor, grace, and surprising wit. These are lines ‘impatient for the embrace of ordinariness,’ which make the routines and rituals of daily life shine.” Reviews |
