From AwardAnnals
| Book: | Reign of Snakes: Poems |
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| Author: | Robert Wrigley |
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| Publisher: | Penguin (Non-Classics) |
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One of America’s most accomplished poets takes his readers on an evocative journey in his latest collection. Described by the late James Dickey as “one of the finest new poets to come along in years,” Robert Wrigley fulfills that early promise with this, his newest collection.
Reign of Snakes is a book about desire, the soul’s desire as much as the body’s. As Jane Hirshfield said of Wrigley’s previous book, In the
Bank of Beautiful Sins (Penguin, 1995), “To read it is to unpeel a little further into the human, and into the wideness that holds the human—a splendid gift.” Reign of Snakes takes us to yet another level, deep into the daily devotions, “where the dark blows a kiss to night.”
…a frigid day in February and a full-grown rattlesnake curled to a comma in the middle of the middle of the just-plowed road. Ice ghost, I think, curve of rock or stubbed-off branch. But the diamonds are there, under a dust of crystals looming, impossible, summer’s tattoo, the mythical argyle of evil.—from Reign of Snakes
