Dorianne Laux’s fifth collection, The Book of Men, is currently available from W.W. Norton. Her fourth book of poems, Facts about the Moon, is the recipient of the Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also author of Awake, What We Carry, finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award, and Smoke, as well as two fine small press editions, Superman: The Chapbook and Dark Charms, both from Red Dragonfly Press. Co-author of The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry, she’s the recipient of two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Widely anthologized, her work has appeared in the Best of APR, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and The Best of the Net. In 2001, she was invited by late poet laureate Stanley Kunitz to read at the Library of Congress.
To live is to serve, my mother’s motto, to blow on the burn, salve the wound, wind miles of gauze bandages, to pull the fork from the hand jammed to the growing bone by a father’s blunt fist, the nice gone from her eyes when she met him in the hall. She had opinions she never kept to herself, bruised… Read more →
She loved the burned parts, crusts, the sauce gone to sludge at the bottom of the pan, bacon curled in on itself, still crackling as she brought it to her mouth, blew away the smoke, “Nice” she’d say, the egg white rimmed in black lace, or forking up the wrinkled butt of the roast, chewing the tough meat to a… Read more →