A01=Joanna Pearson
Author_Joanna Pearson
Category=DC
contemporary
desire
emotion
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
freakshows
greek
health conditions
humorous
iambic pentameter
language
medical
meter
mitmenschkeit
myth
North Carolina
parents
physcial vulnerability
playful
Poetry
precise writing
pregnancy
rhymed couplets
striking images
voyeur
worldly
Product details
- ISBN 9781586540807
- Dimensions: 152 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 20 May 2021
- Publisher: Red Hen Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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The precise gaze and chiseled language of the poems in Oldest Mortal Myth authoritatively convey a broad and deep knowledge. Whether a reimagining a Greek myth in order to infuse it with a contemporary pain, extending empathy and humorous Mitmenschkeit to both denizens and voyeurs of the world's freakshows, or describing with wit and experience the spiritual affects of medical conditions, the book is infused with restrained but piercing emotion, a subtle metrical ear, and enough daring and wit to write in rhymed couplets to take the obvious, easy way. For instance, with the last line of “De Wallen, Amsterdam”: “The moon above the spires, a sexless disk,/eyes us coolly as an odalisque.” I so admire the refusal to make that last line scan as a perfect iambic pentameter line. It would be so easy; all you’d have to do is add the grammatical, but colloquial, “as.” Which would have ruined the line, and the poem. Oh, and the rhymes in the canzone! There’s much to admire here, much to enjoy.
—Marilyn Nelson
Joanna Pearson is the author of Oldest Mortal Myth (Story Line Press, 2012), winner of the 2012 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and the 2014 Towson Prize for Literature. Her collection of short stories, Every Human Love, is forthcoming with Acre Books in 2019. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and daughters.
