An Alabaster Flask - Softcover

Reeser, Jennifer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0971737177 ISBN 13: 9780971737174

Publisher: Wordtech Communications Llc, 2003

Synopsis

The 2003 Word Press First Book Poetry Prize

About this title

About the Author

Jennifer Reeser was born in 1968. Her poems, translations, and articles have appeared or are forthcoming in U.S., British and Internet journals such as Salt (Austr.), The Formalist, The Dark Horse (Scot.), Louisiana Literature, Cumberland Poetry Review, Disquieting Muses, PIVOT, Blue Unicorn, The Lyric, The New Laurel Review, and Able Muse. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and been chosen for selection in the upcoming anthology of New Expansivist writers, Rising Phoenix, edited by Sonny Williams, consulting editor Dana Gioia. She lives in southern Louisiana with her husband Jason and their five children.

From the Inside Flap

"Reading Jennifer Reeser's poems for the first time, you might be reminded of the lyricism of an earlier generation of women poets--Millay, Teasdale, Wylie. But in poems like 'Arclight' and 'Double Ballade of Dead Letters' she displays a voice that is uniquely her own. Working largely apart from schools and influences, Reeser has managed to produce a poetry of seamless craft and unmistakable quality."
--R.S. Gwynn

"Jennifer Reeser has the rare poetic gift of using simple language supremely well -- choosing one right word after another and fitting them (but never forcing them) into the appropriate form. Alabaster Flask is full of poems on unusual subjects (such as love letters to Dr. Frankenstein), in which every image is like an arch that helps to bear the weight, and builds a structure of unusual clarity and beauty."
--Gail White

"Jennifer Reeser's poems combine the lushness of the Louisiana bayou with a classical restraint. As her grandmother planted a riot of flowers in her yard, 'filling the ground with life from curb to curb,' Reeser fills her measures with sensual music. A wide-array of subjects from the personal lyric to the persona--from 'Agatha Christie by Lamplight' to 'Elizabeth Leaves a Letter for Dr. Frankenstein'--appear in an anthology of forms. Among the hardy perennials, quatrains and sonnets, we encounter such exotic metrical cultivars as sapphics and cretics. The reader is also treated to a generous offering of Reeser's accomplished translations."
--A.E. Stallings

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Louisiana Broke My Sleep

Louisiana broke my sleep this morning,
and drew me down her autumn waterways.
The cypress moss a-sway, the bayou yawning,
Louisiana broke my sleep this morning.
White egrets fell across the sunscape dawning
as into skies of humid coral haze,
Louisiana broke my sleep this morning,
and drew me down her autumn waterways.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wordtech Communications Llc
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0971737177
• ISBN 13: 9780971737174
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 108