SYNOPSIS
This rich volume features a substantial number of new poems as well as work selected from four of Robin Morgan's previously published books of poetry.
Upstairs in the Garden: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1988 demonstrates the wide range of her craft, from skill at such traditional forms as sonnet, villanelle, and elegy, through her more colloquial poems--including the contemporary classics "Monster," "The Invisible Woman," and "The Network of the Imaginary Mother"--which have been taken up by women as validation of the different reality in female experience, emblazoned on banners and posters, and quoted as feminist liturgy. The new works--fiery, ironic, wild yet disciplined love poems--resonate with the laser-like intensity familiar to Morgan's readers, but also with a new, astringent sophistication that balances their vulnerability.
REVIEWS
The development of Morgan's artistry is everywhere evident. Work from her early feminist days is filled with rage at the powerlessness of women. . . . But as the pages turn, a new universality of concern and sureness of voice take hold. . . . Lyricism and fresh technical discoveries proclaim new accomplishment in a 'lavish larkspur song . . . with a passion/ for daily use.'--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Morgan fulfills the three requirements for good poetry . . . to teach, to delight, and to arouse passion. An accomplished and original poet, she commands a wealth of technical resources, so evident in the formal poems, yet spilling over into her free verse. Each of her lines has an integrity of its own, a shape indistinguishable from the material embedded within it.--POETRY
Audacious, courageous, poignant, wry--Robin Morgan's collection is all this and more. A large audience will welcome them. So will historians in the future who need to know what the poetry of this time and place was like.--CATHARINE R. STIMPSON
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