Connoisseurs of Worms - by Deborah Warren (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>In these poems, the always-original Deborah Warren enchants the ear and dazzles the eye of the imagination.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><b><i>Connoisseurs of Worms</i> is a bestiary, a theogony, a field guide, a museum guide, a pantheon, a history of learning . . . Reading these poems will alter your thinking about a good many of the things that share heaven and earth with us."--Mark Jarman, author of <i>The Heronry</i> and <i>Dailiness</i> <p/>Warren goes anywhere, inhabits anything: it is fun to see a poet so willing to embrace metamorphosis . . . A great book.―<i>The Millions</i></b> <p/>Deborah Warren's witty and energetic poems are full of play and imagination. The title poem of <i>Connoisseurs of Worms</i> describes the mole, a 'geonaut supreme' with his oddly enviable tunnel vision. Other animals prompt views about humans, and not always happy ones. Alongside Charlemagne's elephant and an intracoronary mosquito, topics include a queen with an alleged tail, laughter-divination, Neanderthal hygiene, and an exploding baby. These poems delight in new perspectives and an astounding verbal music.<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><i>Connoisseurs of Worms</i> focuses on the humble, the seemingly insignificant, even the reviled--no subject too small or too abstruse to be addressed with Warren's metaphysical ingenuity--but ends above ground, while the sun still shines and there is still hay to make. It starts small and ends with the panoramic sweep. As this is Warren's fourth collection, it might be time for a Selected, one which would lean toward the poems that take bigger emotional risks like "Late Mowing," that display Warren's mastery, an ease in the tradition, a virtuosic but idiosyncratic music, and a skeleton's comfort in its own living skin.―<b><i>Los Angeles Review of Books</b></i> <p/>Immensely engaging . . . Steeped in references to Greek and Roman history and literature, this book sings with an erudite yet accessible energy one might expect from a former Latin teacher. After finishing this collection, readers will definitely want to dive into the rest of Warren's oeuvre.―<b><i>Booklist</b></i> <p/>Understated, funny, and wise.―<b><i>Commonweal</i></b> <p/>"T. S. Eliot once defined 'wit' as 'a tough reasonableness beneath the slight lyric grace.' Deborah Warren's poems are admirable examples of such a quality; their reasonableness always waiting for a good reader to discover it; their lyric grace revealed through the formal strengths of rhyme (often pleasingly irregular), and a persuasive speaking voice with the suppleness of good prose. She is a delight to read--indeed, to read aloud."--<b>William H. Pritchard, author of <i>Updike: America's Man of Letters</i></b> <p/>"Deborah Warren's collection of poems <i>Connoisseurs of Worms</i> is a bestiary, a theogony, a field guide, a museum guide, a pantheon, a history of learning. Her poems achieve the compression of epigrams and finely detailed illustrations as if they were etched or engraved. They are formally durable and musical and come to life in praise of the world's physical and spiritual beings. Those connoisseurs of her title are moles, by the way, and you'll think differently about them after reading the poem. In fact, reading these poems will alter your thinking about a good many of the things that share heaven and earth with us."--<b>Mark Jarman, author of <i>The Heronry</i> and <i>Dailiness</i></b> <p/><b>PRAISE FOR DEBORAH WARREN'S OTHER BOOKS: </b> <p/>Not since Richard Wilbur has a poet combined formal grace, visual imagination, and worldly wisdom as appealingly as Deborah Warren. Whether she is writing about the largest subjects--history, love, the soul--or the smallest--housecats, Latin lessons, Cleopatra's nose--Warren, like the craftsman she writes about in 'The Glassblower, shows that she is a master of the 'possibility and prism' of her art.--<b>Adam Kirsch</b> on <i>Dream with Flowers and Bowl of Fruit</i> <p/>Deborah Warren's poised and meticulous poems deliver pure potential in small packages: an egg, a kitten, a bluebird. Each burnished object or creature contains a principle of growth; hence, even Warren's tiniest lyrics move us from one state of being to another . . . Warren is also a mistress of finely observed images from nature, art, and history. Finally, the voice that coveys these varied poetic riches--a voice by turns deadpan, fretful, rueful, playful--is unfailingly understated. Each poem thereby retains its integrity, freshness, and mystery.--<b>Rachel Hadas</b> on <i>Dream with Flowers and Bowl of Fruit</i> <p/>What a strange, profound, and beautiful book this is, with its insistence on pursuing precisely that whose nature it is to elude pursuit! The widening range of Warren's restless attention encompasses aesthetics, the arts, nature, the difficulties of perception, and the complicated psychic dynamics of aging; and she tackles all of it in language that bristles with intellect and passion, discipline and a yearning to break free. How irresistible I find her invitation to join in her pursuit, in poem after poem in this dazzling collection.--<b>Rhina P. Espaillat</b> on <i>Dream with Flowers and Bowl of Fruit</i> <p/>Ms. Warren's poems combine imagination with intelligence, music with emotional energy. The language sparkles in poem after poem.―<b>Dana Gioia</b> on <i>Zero Meridian</i> <p/>Warren is among the very finest American poets who still observe the strictures of meter and rhyme. She informs her work with lively feeling, wit, wisdom, and memorable music; she keeps us sitting up and interested.―<b>X. J. Kennedy.</b> on <i>Zero Meridian</i><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br>Deborah Warren is the author of three books of poetry--<i>The Size of Happiness</i>, <i>Zero Meridian</i>, winner of the New Criterion Poetry Prize, and <i>Dream With Flowers and Bowl of Fruit</i>, winner of the Richard Wilbur Award--and a translation of <i>Ausonius: The Moselle and Other Poems</i>. Warren's writing has appeared in the <i>New Yorker</i>, <i>Paris Review</i>, <i>Poetry</i>, and other publications, and she has won the Robert Penn Warren Prize, Howard Nemerov Award, Robert Frost Award, and Meringoff Award for her work. She lives in Massachusetts.
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