{"product_id":"9780698183322","title":"It Shouldn't Have Been Beautiful","description":"\u003cb\u003eA powerful new collection from poet, essayist, and frequent \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e contributor Lia Purpura\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Lia Purpura has won national acclaim as both a poet and an essayist. The exquisitely rendered poems in this, her fourth collection, reach back to an early affinity for proverbs and riddles and the proto-poetry found in those forms. Taking on epic subjects—time and memory, metamorphosis and indeterminacy, the complicated nature of beauty, wordless states of being—each poem explores a bright, crisp, singular moment of awareness or shock or revelation.  Purpura reminds us that short poems, never merely brief nor fragmentary, can transcend their size, like small dogs, espresso, a drop of mercury.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eFrom the Trade Paperback edition.\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Penguin Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47076520493296,"sku":"9780698183322","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780698183322_p0.jpg?v=1763621028","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780698183322","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}