Ardor

$19.95

by Karen An-hwei Lee

Ardor is a book-length poem comprised of lucid dreams, letters, and prayers with the sensual feminine awareness of C.D. Wright, the radiant spirituality of Fanny Howe, the playful erudition of Anne Carson, and the linguistic play of Myung Mi Kim. Ardor employs ecstatic utterances, linguistic migrations, silences, and women’s voices in a feminine consciousness lingering on the mystery of love and glossolalia, speaking tongues in the context of a lyric postmodern aesthetic.

by Karen An-hwei Lee

Ardor is a book-length poem comprised of lucid dreams, letters, and prayers with the sensual feminine awareness of C.D. Wright, the radiant spirituality of Fanny Howe, the playful erudition of Anne Carson, and the linguistic play of Myung Mi Kim. Ardor employs ecstatic utterances, linguistic migrations, silences, and women’s voices in a feminine consciousness lingering on the mystery of love and glossolalia, speaking tongues in the context of a lyric postmodern aesthetic.

About the Author

Karen An-hwei Lee is the author of Ardor (Tupelo Press, 2008) and In Medias Res (Sarabande Books, 2004), selected for the Kathryn A. Morton Prize by Heather McHugh and chosen for the Norma Farber First Book Award by Cole Swensen. A former writing resident at the MacDowell Colony of the Arts and the Millay Arts Colony and recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts grant, she currently chairs the English Department at a faith-based college in southern California, where she is also a novice harpist.

Advanced Praise

Barbara Jane Reyes received an Advance Reader’s Copy of Karen An-hwei Lee’s Ardor. Her analysis of the book is quite illuminating; Barbara Reyes is clearly a very attentive reader. Consider this couple of lines: “In Ardor, there is a recurrent I or a she who is a blind woman, and this is ironic, given the concern with ophthalmic texts; as well, Lee’s work is so full of such deep and luscious color: terra cottas, walnuts, cabernets, coral violets, blue raspberries, peach colored roses, azalea, and human heart as pomegranate or pomegranate as human heart. But we can also experience the beauty of these intensely, using our other senses.”

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-932195-69-9