Connoisseurs of Worms by Deborah Warren (English) Paperback Book

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In these poems, the always-original Deborah Warren enchants the ear and dazzles the eye of the imagination.

FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Publisher Description

"Connoisseurs of Worms 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 The Heronry and Dailiness "Warren goes anywhere, inhabits anything: it is fun to see a poet so willing to embrace metamorphosis . . . A great book."The Millions Deborah Warren's witty and energetic poems are full of play and imagination. The title poem of Connoisseurs of Worms 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.

Author Biography

Deborah Warren is the author of three books of poetry--The Size of Happiness, Zero Meridian, winner of the New Criterion Poetry Prize, and Dream With Flowers and Bowl of Fruit, winner of the Richard Wilbur Award--and a translation of Ausonius: The Moselle and Other Poems. Warren's writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Paris Review, Poetry, 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.

Review

"Connoisseurs of Worms 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."Los Angeles Review of Books "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."Booklist "Understated, funny, and wise."Commonweal "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."--William H. Pritchard, author of Updike: America's Man of Letters "Deborah Warren's collection of poems Connoisseurs of Worms 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."--Mark Jarman, author of The Heronry and Dailiness PRAISE FOR DEBORAH WARREN'S OTHER BOOKS: "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."--Adam Kirsch on Dream with Flowers and Bowl of Fruit "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."--Rachel Hadas on Dream with Flowers and Bowl of Fruit "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."--Rhina P. Espaillat on Dream with Flowers and Bowl of Fruit "Ms. Warren's poems combine imagination with intelligence, music with emotional energy. The language sparkles in poem after poem."Dana Gioia on Zero Meridian "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."X. J. Kennedy. on Zero Meridian

Review Quote

"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."-- William H. Pritchard, author of Updike: America's Man of Letters "Deborah Warren's collection of poems Connoisseurs of Worms 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."-- Mark Jarman, author of The Heronry and Dailiness PRAISE FOR DEBORAH WARREN'S OTHER BOOKS: "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."-- Adam Kirsch on Dream with Flowers and Bowl of Fruit "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."-- Rachel Hadas on Dream with Flowers and Bowl of Fruit "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."-- Rhina P. Espaillat on Dream with Flowers and Bowl of Fruit "Ms. Warren's poems combine imagination with intelligence, music with emotional energy. The language sparkles in poem after poem." Dana Gioia on Zero Meridian "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." X. J. Kennedy. on Zero Meridian

Excerpt from Book

"Mole" Earth is his occupation, and the mole works the turf in his native breaststroke, swimming hallways into the sod--a geonaut supreme, and connoisseur of worms; I've heard him breaking roots an inch beneath my sole and seen how the subterranean specialist carves out for himself a single, simple role. I envy the expertise he brings to bear on dirt, the narrow office he was given; as for me, my habitat is thought, where I grope and sweat and scrabble out a living forced to prove--up here in a windy lair as invisible as the mole's--that there exists an animal who can dig a hole in air. "Boy Stung by a Bee" Two astonished seconds follow the dart into the ankle punctured by a barb of melittin-- but he knows motion better than he knows bees: He pricks the air with treble cries, jerks his foot from the grass, throws back his head, hugs his knee to his heart, and hops mad circles to exorcise the venom stuck in the skin. Don't tell him that in a minute the sting will pass; if you want a unit of time he'll recognize, you'll have to calibrate infinity. "Memento mori" Being thin, I feel mortality more than most, because it's always there in rib and hipbone, right beneath my skin. Here in my wrist and clavicle I see my skeleton laid prematurely bare-- the frame under the flesh. Because I'm thin, my sternum, sacrum, and my stony spine, at night especially, rise up to remind me I'm a living ossuary. Yet, haunted by my bones' gaunt pokes and fey elbowings, I'm glad enough to let them prod me with their message--Seize the day with metacarpals wide--not to forget what waits only a thin membrane away.

Description for Sales People

Warren's books have been well reviewed and won numerous awards. The author is a good self-promoter who writes for many different publications.

Details ISBN1589881567 Author Deborah Warren Publisher Paul Dry Books Language English Year 2021 ISBN-10 1589881567 ISBN-13 9781589881563 Format Paperback Publication Date 2021-04-27 Imprint Paul Dry Books Pages 85 DEWEY 811.6 Audience General We've got this

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