Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis, Poems by Lois Marie Harrod

The sharp, angular lines of Lois Marie Harrod's Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis evoke a classical world infused with the weight of history and the pressure of the contemporary world, and out of that pressure, forge artistry.

Sample Poems by Lois Marie Harrod

"Do be careful with these poems, made of velvet and razorblades, hunger and anger, need and greed, family and scenery and mystery. Mystery and a crisp sharp music. Mystery with history walking fluently behind it. And cosmogony ahead of it like a white snow cloud shading a volcano. Do read these lyrical and powerful poems, and as Lois Marie Harrod suggests in the poem 'Catching the Deer,' 'maybe today/ you will stop dying.'"-Alicia Ostriker

"Lois Marie Harrod's powerful new collection flows like the ocean from which its avenging heroine, Nemesis, emerges 'like a word rising from a pond.' The poem seems to arise dripping from snow and mist and root itself firmly in clay, earth and sand, where it blossoms 'knowing, as I did not, what it desires,' and in this transformation, 'what has been grief becomes ground.' These are poems rich in bright, fresh images that startle and then settle down into their perfect shapes."-Gail Entrekin

"A deceptive evenness dominates Lois Harrod's Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis-an evenness of stanza, of tone. But the reader soon clings to this steadiness, this solidity, because these poems are determined to convince us how partial and unexpected the world is. 'Open this sentence carefully' the poems advise, and 'look how the ledge gives way.' Indeed, one of the primary pleasures of poetry is seeing how quickly the known and unknown can switch places. Harrod's considerable accomplishment is in capturing these elemental transitions for us. 'Maybe I do not need to tell you how the sun becomes water,' the poem says, but our great fortune is that Harrod does tell. On every page."-Catie Rosemurgy

Lois Marie Harrod won the Tennessee Chapbook Prize 2012 (Poems& Plays) with her manuscript The Only Is. Her 11^th book Brief Term, poems about teaching, was published by Black Buzzard Press (2011), and her chapbook Cosmogony won the 2010 Hazel Lipa Chapbook contest (Iowa State University). Her chapbook Furniture won the 2008 Grayson Press Poetry Prize. Previous publications include the chapbook Firmament (2007); the chapbook Put Your Sorry Side Out (2005); Spelling the World Backwards (2000); the chapbook This Is a Story You Already Know (l999); Part of the Deeper Sea (1997); the chapbook Green Snake Riding (l994), Crazy Alice (l991) Every Twinge a Verdict (l987). She won her third poetry fellowship from the New Jersey Council on the Arts in 2003. Over 400 of her poems have been published online and in print journals including American Poetry Review, Blueline, The MacGuffin, Salt, The Literary Review, Verse Daily and Zone 3. A Geraldine R. Dodge poet and former high school teacher, she She presently teaches Creative Writing and supervises student teachers at The College of New Jersey as well as teaches in the Evergreen Forum at Princeton Senior Resource Center.

978-1625490094, 122 pages

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