The Last Girl: Poems

A shimmering girl who disappears in daylight. A boy who goes to war and comes back forever broken. New landscapes in which old ghosts appear, telling their bits of stories. Lovers and losses, visions and dreams—such are the people, places, and images who fill Rose Solari’s third collection of poetry, The Last Girl. Moving beyond the often-narrative constructions of her previous collection, the poems in this collection tell their truths slant-wise, in spiky, inventive lines that sing their way under the reader’s skin. Solari’s whole-hearted lyricism of her elegiac moments, linguistic inventiveness, and range of tones sweep the reader from dark to light, from pain to joy, from unbearable loss to giddy delight. The poems in this collection represent a writer working at the peak of her powers, possessed of technical mastery, fierce perception, and a tender but unsentimental heart.

Rose Solari is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Difficult Weather and Orpheus in the Park; the one-act play, Looking for Guenevere; and a novel, A Secret Woman. She has lectured and taught writing workshops at many institutions, including the University of Maryland–College Park, the Jung Society of Washington, and the Centre for Creative Writing at Kellogg College, University of Oxford. Her poems and essays have appeared in various magazines, journals, and anthologies. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize, an Academy of American Poets University Prize, and the Columbia Book Award. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland.