In "Poem for Jenne," which opens Jacqueline Osherow's ambitious and challenging newcollection, a neighbor has planted larkspur and delphinium in the poet's yard and is tending them hoping to bring color and light into a household stricken by personal tragedy. As the bright blue, star-shaped flowers bloom for a second time, the poet writes, "earth's reaching for her heavens, I for words / or any chink of rapture I can claim." The pervasive theme, in this poem and throughout Whitethorn, is that human suffering may be irremediable, yet in nature and language one may find a key to unlock the...
In "Poem for Jenne," which opens Jacqueline Osherow's ambitious and challenging newcollection, a neighbor has planted larkspur and delphinium in th...
In this collection, Jacqueline Osherow gives us perfectly formed, musical poems that glide between the worlds of art, architecture, literature, and religion. Traveling through Europe, Tel Aviv, and New York, Osherow observes with a keen eye the details of objects -- beautiful buildings and ancient artifacts -- and of the conversations and interactions she has with others. Finely constructed and always engaging, her poems uncover the startling truths of memory and coax our own forgotten moments from the recesses of the mind.
In this collection, Jacqueline Osherow gives us perfectly formed, musical poems that glide between the worlds of art, architecture, literature, and...
The reach of Divine Ratios is global, ranging from Tang Dynasty China and the Florentine Renaissance to contemporary Baltimore, post–World War II Berlin, and the landscapes of the Mountain West. The speed and mobility evoked in this new collection by Jacqueline Osherow are not only physical—a traveler's movement in a crowded, thrilling world—but imaginative, and its poetic idiom is no less varied, as a breezy conversational tone serves as a counterpoint to traditional form. With striking juxtapositions of natural and cultural wonders, this enrapturing volume asks, what is the right...
The reach of Divine Ratios is global, ranging from Tang Dynasty China and the Florentine Renaissance to contemporary Baltimore, post–World War II Be...