Blue Venus: Poems

In Blue Venus, Lisa Russ Spaar explores the intimate relationship between the sensual and the sacred. Her nocturnal poems weave themselves into the very fabric of private fervor—lyric, sexual, spiritual—beginning with "Dusk" and continuing on until "Dawn."Fierce and giving, Spaar's exquisite verse isolates essential moments of vulnerability and wonder. A series on insomnia—in the voices of some notable insomniacs—is among the most moving extended sequences in recent memory. Elsewhere, she traces poetry back to its primordial roots—prayer, lullabye, mourning, exaltation. Propelled throughout by a resolute belief in the relationship between the human and the cosmic Blue Venus is "a brilliant new star in poetry's firmament" (Carol Muske-Dukes).

Author Biography: Lisa Russ Spaar directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia. The recipient of a Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers, she is the author of two poetry chapbooks and Glass Town, a full-length collection; and the editor of Acquainted with the Night, an anthology of poems about insomnia. Her poetry has appeared in many periodicals, including Poetry, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly Review.