Keeper of the pondPoems by margaret Stawowy |
Margaret Stawowy’s new collection could just as well have been called Lost and Found. These meditations consider a tenuous world, vanished or fated to vanish, as though to reclaim it, to keep it from absolute annihilation. A number of these poems are gorgeous conceits, sometimes playful, sometimes painful, sometimes perplexing, but almost always executed with a sure hand and a cool eye. Stawowy guides us through the undersides of childhood and memory and dread as "someone in love / with anomaly," who is also "always grateful / for grace"—a welcome combination for the lucky reader.
—Thomas Centolella, Dorset Prize winner and author of Almost Human
Margaret Stawowy’s poems are vivid, allusive yet precise, rich in emotional detail and written in language that draws the reader into her world so that it becomes our world, too.
—Richard Modiano, director, Beyond Baroque