The poems in Elise Paschen s Bestiary explore domestic preoccupations set against the backdrop of the wild-heartedness, real and imagined, of the animal world, praises the poet Jason Shinder. In this modern-day Bestiary, or Book of Beasts, the line between animal and human is thinly-drawn the daughter of a Celtic king, through love, is transformed from beast to human; lovers take flight as moon and owl; manatees transform, before the explorers eyes, into mermaids. This dynamic runs throughout the collection: taking flight, hovering between air and earth, plunging, and then...

In Elise Paschen's prize-winning poetry collection, Infidelities, Richard Wilbur wrote that the poems -. . . draw upon a dream life which can deeply tincture the waking world.- In her third poetry book, The Nightlife, Paschen once again taps into dream states, creating a narrative which balances between the lived and the imagined life. Probing the tension between -The Elevated- and the -Falls, - she explores troubled love and relationships, the danger of accident and emotional volatility. At the heart of the book is a dream triptych which retells the same encounter from...