Dorianne Laux

A collection of new and selected works from a prize-winning poet known to bear compassionate and ruthless witness to the quotidian.

New and Selected Poems

Only as the Day Is Long

Kim Addonizio

Explains the process of writing poetry, including what subjects to use, how to overcome writer's block, tips on getting published, and offers writing exercises

The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry

"Laux writes gritty, tough, lyrical poems that depict the actual nature of life in the West today."—Philip Levine The narrative poems in Dorianne Laux's fifth collection charge through the summer of love, where Vietnam casts a long shadow, and into the present day, where she compassionately paints the smoky bars, graffiti, and addiction of urban life. Laux is "continually engaging and, at her best, luminous" (San Diego Union-Tribune). from "To Kiss Frank," make out with him a bit, this is what my friend would like to do oh these too many dead summers later, and as much as I want to stroll with her into the poet's hazy fancy all I can see is O'Hara's long gone lips fallen free of the bone, slumbering beneath the grainy soil.

The Book of Men: Poems

A fourth collection of poetic works conveys observations about the nature of western community life with pieces on such subjects as a quiet street at dusk, a pool hall, and a bare tree, in a volume that explores the experiences of working people and women whose life cycles are influenced by the moon.

Poems

Facts about the Moon

Dorianne Laux's poetry is a poetry of risk; it goes to the very edge of extinction to find the hard facts that need to be sung. What We Carry includes poems of survival, poems of healing, poems of affirmation and poems of celebration. Sculptured, fluid and generous, they reveal a poet whose vision is informed by experience and caring. Of her poetry and poetic odyssey, critic William O'Daly writes: "It seems that Ms. Laux has chosen to witness what she must on her journey, in some way reliving and weaving together who she was and who she is to fully reclaim her body and soul ... The poems seem to have been well prepared for, born of years of hard work, careful listening, patience, until all the notes rang true." That attention to precision of image, language and sound, that pursuit of honesty and love is What We Carry - our lives, worth having, and worth transforming.

What We Carry

Laux weaves the warp and woof of ordinary life into extraordinary and complex tapestries.

Smoke

Awake

Red Dragonfly Press

The Chapbook

Superman

In her powerful fourth collection, Dorianne Laux once again strikes fire from neighborhood moments: a quiet street at dusk, a pool hall, a bare tree. Focusing on the grace of working people, she captures the pain and beauty of women in all their variety, caught in the lunar pull of our time. --W.W. Norton and Company.

A reissuing of Awake, the debut collection of poetry by Dorianne Laux

Dorianne Laux

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