So Forth

Reviews / Votes

"The enrichments and diminishments of aging, ambivalence in the context of intimacy, the refinements and depredations of culture, and how woman artists (including the poet herself) absorb and resist the expressive norms and structures largely devised by men, these are the concerns that animate the poems in Rosanna Warren's new collection, So Forth. An unforgettable book by one of our essential poets." -- Alan Shapiro, author of Against Translation "Rosanna Warren is a writer I read immediately, no matter the place or time: her manner is enticingly high, and the stuff is harrowingly everyday. So Forth has all the signature elegance, all the learning, the hunger, but the book is newly vulnerable, both personally and politically. Warren allows for the biggest laugh while making room for tears, and these poems feel like life itself-which ought to be the simplest but is the hardest thing of all." -- James Longenbach, author of Earthling "'My heart was torn open and now it's all window,' writes Rosanna Warren in this unforgettable, untamed, unrelenting book. While her country 'hurls itself away,' becomes a nightmare of 'police state,' a place of 'camps, / children in camps' the poet tells us we must persist, despite it all, we 'we must go on with our mysterious work.' There is wisdom in these pages, self-knowledge in this voice. It is gorgeous, it is generous, it is inimitable, this offering." -- Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, a National Book Award finalist "In Rosanna Warren's profound new collection, So Forth, desire, emptiness, and the powerful contradictions of women's lives stir up 'a storm of wants.' Warren relies on the hopeless 'etceteras' of our blood muscle, the heart, insisting on itself, on its 'so forth,' its circulate similes, sprung into terrifying poetry, into such rhetorical immortality" -- Carol Muske-Dukes, author of Blue Rose "This is Rosanna Warren's testament to making life while resisting the insensitivities and brutalities of the day. It sees purpose in art, but especially in nature, and searches for a way to reconcile the two, where too often it seems obvious and easy to do so. It's not. And the fluidity of the poetry is often counter to the complexity of considering if such a reconciling is possible or desirable. Unique." -- John Kinsella, author of Firebreaks "This is a book of love and war, rich with poems of desire and rage, situated in our nearly unbearable historical moment, alive to its challenges and pleasures. Rosanna Warren uses passion and calculation in equal measure to grapple with an uncertain future-in this, she is the best of citizens, loving her world in the midst of fierce disenchantment. The poems combine lavish but pellucid description, and a disarming directness that senses the heart of the matter with unmatched agility." -- Katie Peterson, author of A Piece of Good News