In her sixth collection, Kathleen Peirce extends her reach toward the realms of birth and afterlife and finds them liminal places. These are otherworldly poems immersed in earthly intricacies altered by the poet's intimate gaze. To show what it means to create while being created, these poems pull the curtain back, or down.
Poet Liz Waldner has written of Vault: A Poem, “Find here: poetry’s virtues/pleasures. Gorgeous witness. Silence muscled with qualities. Net of attentiveness rippling outward from the meeting of the seer and the seen. Kin to The Tempest: the wondrous woven of the mundane. The strength of purpose and hearkening needed to walk in beauty’s strangeness. Its sensuousness; its intimacy (especially with necessity) that supples its language. Patience of soul spun into physical brilliance. Time present and antique, interior and exterior, “feather of hair in one hand, / scissors in another, not the heart / beating but what might return over the heart.” These are the most beautiful poems I know."
Winner of the 1990 Associated Writing Programs' Award Series in Poetry. "A work of profound beauty and courage and spiritual accountability." —Jorie Graham
Of this book, the poet Jean Valentine has written: "Startling in their mystery, these poems are entirely original: abstract and passionate, sensual and otherworldly, trance-like and exciting. They are told through a 'we,' perhaps all of us human beings, remembering; yet strangely, too, each of us experiencing everything alone. The Ardors is a book that takes us beyond ourselves, beyond our workaday bodies and souls."
