The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep - Hardcover

Gregerson, Linda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395822904 ISBN 13: 9780395822906

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 1996

Synopsis

This is the second book of poems by a powerful, compassionate, and fiercely intelligent poet who writes about the boundaries between life and death, sickness and health, body and spirit. Gregerson's theme is our formidable encounter with mortality - the assaults of disease and bodily harm, the gradations of material and psychic well-being, domestic treachery, self-slaughter, failures of mind. Her emphasis is always on the resourcefulness of the human spirit, the intelligence of the body, the abundant loveliness of the created world. What readers will love about these poems - many of them centered on young children - is their combination of straightforwardness and complexity. Linda Gregerson is not an ordinary believer, but the rhythms and icons of faith pervade her work. Readers will also relish the music of Gregerson's poems and the remarkable use of line breaks and patterns on the page, which give her poems aesthetic as well as moral authority. These are not light verses, far from it

About this title

Review

Linda Gregerson writes with a quiet power and a subtle musicality about perseverance, suffering, grace, and hope in the face of disease and mortality. Mark Strand calls her work "among the very best being written." In "The Resurrection of the Body," Gregerson paints a scene of love and determination at her child's physical therapy clinic. As one mother wipes drool from her daughter's mouth, Gregerson writes: "The mother would give her soul to see / this child lift her head on her own." These poems conjure such relationships with a balance of the graceful and the elemental.

From the Back Cover

This second book of poems by a powerful, compassionate, and fiercely intelligent poet bravely explores the ways in which we humans encounter mortality: the assaults of disease and bodily harm, the cruel inequities of material and psychic well-being, domestic treachery, self-slaughter, failures of mind. Linda Gregerson's work emphasizes the resourcefulness of the human spirit, the intelligence of the body, the abundant beauty of the created world. What readers will love about these poems - many of them centered on young children - is the way they combine straightforwardness and complexity. Gregerson is not an ordinary believer, but the rhythms and icons of faith pervade her work. Readers will also relish the music of these poems and the remarkable use of line breaks and patterns on the page, which give her poems aesthetic as well as moral authority. These are not light verses, far from it, but they are unashamedly poems of praise. Devotional, even celebratory in their cadence, they move with the gravity of high art.

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0395822904
• ISBN 13: 9780395822906
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 77