Description
Winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Prize
Selected by Marilyn Nelson
Finalist, 2003 Paterson Poetry Prize
"Imagine Leda black-" begins Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon's exciting new collection of poems. Mixing vernacular language with classical mythology, modern struggles with Biblical trials, she gives voice to silenced women past and present.
In Van Clief-Stefanon's powerful voice, last night's angry words "puffed / into the dark room like steam / punching through the thick surface / of cooking grits." She remembers a child's innocence "lost / in the house where I learned the red rug / against my chest, my knees / my tongue, . . . ." Black Swan is filled with pain, loss, hope, and the promise of salvation.
Winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Prize.
About the Author
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon is assistant professor of English at Cornell University. She is the author of the poetry collection Black Swan, winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and coauthor, with Elizabeth Alexander, of the chapbook Poems in Conversat
Reviews
This is simply a terrific book. Reading it brings heartbreak and pleasure. - Marilyn Nelson ""A series of dramatic portraits: a Florida landscape too hot to touch, the mother's Pentecostal Old Testament law of judgment, a father's recklessness in the mindless spreading of seed, male malingering with no meaningful work, and little instruction by example.... Ecstatic lyric, ritual grace under extreme pressure, realized."" - Michael S. Harper
Book Information
ISBN 9780822957874
Author Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
Format Paperback
Page Count 72
Imprint University of Pittsburgh Press
Publisher University of Pittsburgh Press
Selected by Marilyn Nelson
Finalist, 2003 Paterson Poetry Prize
"Imagine Leda black-" begins Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon's exciting new collection of poems. Mixing vernacular language with classical mythology, modern struggles with Biblical trials, she gives voice to silenced women past and present.
In Van Clief-Stefanon's powerful voice, last night's angry words "puffed / into the dark room like steam / punching through the thick surface / of cooking grits." She remembers a child's innocence "lost / in the house where I learned the red rug / against my chest, my knees / my tongue, . . . ." Black Swan is filled with pain, loss, hope, and the promise of salvation.
Winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Prize.
About the Author
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon is assistant professor of English at Cornell University. She is the author of the poetry collection Black Swan, winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and coauthor, with Elizabeth Alexander, of the chapbook Poems in Conversat
Reviews
This is simply a terrific book. Reading it brings heartbreak and pleasure. - Marilyn Nelson ""A series of dramatic portraits: a Florida landscape too hot to touch, the mother's Pentecostal Old Testament law of judgment, a father's recklessness in the mindless spreading of seed, male malingering with no meaningful work, and little instruction by example.... Ecstatic lyric, ritual grace under extreme pressure, realized."" - Michael S. Harper
Book Information
ISBN 9780822957874
Author Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
Format Paperback
Page Count 72
Imprint University of Pittsburgh Press
Publisher University of Pittsburgh Press
