Synopsis
Poetry. "Myrna Stone, in HOW ELSE TO LOVE THE WORLD, seems to ask what can redeem 'the addle and dross the hours devise' (her fine phrase from the title poem). One answer the book provides is 'this carnal life,' whether manifested in human touch or on painted canvas ('stroke of flesh and brush'). The scenes depicted may be tawdry or elegant, voluptuous or corrupt, but Stone's writing is always crisp with precision and civility. Her forms are as diverse as the painters she calls up, from Bruegel to John Singer Sargent. Reading Stone, I think of John Donne. Like him, she delights in wit and desire and the sweet coupling of word and word"--Elton Glaser.
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About the Author
Myrna Stone is the author of HOW ELSE TO LOVE THE WORLD, The Art of Loss, and THE CASANOVA CHRONICLES. Her work has appeared in such journals as Poetry, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Boston Review, and Massachusetts Review, and in five anthologies, including BELOVED ON THE EARTH: 150 POEMS OF GRIEF AND GRATITUDE and Flora Poetica: The Chatto Book of Botanical Verse. She is the recipient of two Ohio Arts Council Fellowships in Poetry, a Full Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center, the 2002 Dr. O. Marvin Lewis Poetry Award, and the 2001 Ohio Poet of the Year Award.
From the Back Cover
Myrna Stone, in How Else to Love the World, seems to ask what can redeem "the addle and dross the hours devise" (her fine phrase from the title poem). One answer the book provides is "this carnal life," whether manifested in human touch or on painted canvas ("stroke of flesh and brush"). The scenes depicted may be tawdry or elegant, voluptuous or corrupt, but Stone's writing is always crisp with precision and civility. Her forms are as diverse as the painters she calls up, from Bruegel to John Singer Sargent. Reading Stone, I think of John Donne. Like him, she delights in wit and desire and the sweet coupling of word and word.
--Elton Glaser
" ... what solace / is a life without ardor?" asks the poet, who then counsels the sensualist in herself, "Put your mouth / to its service and breathe." Through formal gestures and voluptuous language, Myrna Stone praises the pleasures of the world, whether they arise from "the body's ambition" or from the mind aroused by discipline and art. How Else to Love the World is a book of fierce and passionate engagements.
--Michael Waters
From the opening poems, including especially "Incarnadine," . . . to the sixteen sections of "Elements of Desire," . . . the reader is increasingly aware of falling under the spell of a poet whose relationship with the world is passionate, even romantic-lover and beloved--and whose way with language is sensuous, often erotic, and palpably physical.
--B. H. Fairchild, from the Introduction
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