Description
Book SynopsisIn this, her second collection of poems, J. Allyn Rosser explores the human condition in all its gloriously valiant pathos. The poems, alternating between deadpan and dead serious, dwell on our continual reinventions of self and world, and the restless dynamic that vibrates between them.
Trade ReviewIt is Rosser's splendid articulation that impresses initially, not just that her poems are well written, but that they are so resolutely anchored in the idioms of speech and the necessities of the human heart. She ranges fluently from blues riffs to experimental lyrics and narratives, to formal poems of such confidence that they seem at once ancient and contemporary. And if Rosser cares deeply for balance, not the least pleasure in reading Misery Prefigured derives from a rage so fiercely governed that it puts one in mind of Yeats. I do not know of another poet so unafraid of the rhapsodic and yet so capable of high wit, of addressing the world's 'full frontal mundanity.' - Rodney Jones, author of Elegy for the Southern Drawl ""J. Allyn Rosser's poems are savvy close-readings of her daily experience. She knows how to balance cynicism with the hope for love in language that is freshly minted and full of local surprises. In the words of her own metaphor, she writes with heart and wit about the friction inside the machine of her life."" - Billy Collins, author of Questions about Angels
