Cold Angel of Mercy

“Delicate, detailed, and firm all at once. Amy Randolph’s poems in Cold Angel of Mercy are anything but cold. They are loving celebrations of what it means to live on this side of heaven. She is an exquisite poet.”

―Liz Rosenberg

“In an age of poems all too easily written and all too frequently published, Amy Randolph’s poems are those rarest of things: works of art filled with tact, restraint, and deep human feeling seasoned by experience and years. Filled with 'grief and unfolding,' yet open to all that arrives, 'lonely in its unexpectedness,' her poems are as vigilant as the regrets she herself observes, as heartfelt as that yearning for God she so movingly inhabits and describes. Here is a poet who knows all too well that 'you don’t have to go far to be damaged,' but who also knows the distance one does have to go―and the attention that needs to be paid, the love given―to be redeemed.”

―Michael Blumenthal

Amy Randolph was born on January 10, 1966 at Sangley Point U.S. Naval Station on the island of Cavite, Republic of the Philippines. She spent her childhood moving with her Coast Guard family from state to state. She attended St. Francis Cabrini High School in New Orleans before moving to the Texas hill country, where she’s lived for the past sixteen years. She received her B.A. in English and her M.F.A. in poetry at Southwest Texas State University and her Ph.D. at Binghamton University.

She has published poems in Black Warrior Review, Peregrine, and Lullwater Review, among others. Her manuscript has been a finalist in several national competitions, including the Ohio State University/The Journal Award. She recently completed her first novel, is working on another, and learning to play the violin.

She teaches part time at Southwest Texas State University and lives in San Marcos, Texas with her husband, son, and daughter.