Duties of the Spirit

$19.95

by Patricia Fargnoli

Duties of the Spirit is comprised of deeply moving, lyrical and unforgettable explorations of the joys and fears that come with growing older in America.

“These poems are stamped with an energetic and outgoing attentiveness to the world. This, so much more than just the humming examination of the self, is what makes writing a sacred thing. Who does this is a true poet, and few do it better than Patricia Fargnoli.” — Mary Oliver

by Patricia Fargnoli

Duties of the Spirit is comprised of deeply moving, lyrical and unforgettable explorations of the joys and fears that come with growing older in America.

“These poems are stamped with an energetic and outgoing attentiveness to the world. This, so much more than just the humming examination of the self, is what makes writing a sacred thing. Who does this is a true poet, and few do it better than Patricia Fargnoli.” — Mary Oliver

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About the Author

Patricia Fargnoli, the New Hampshire Poet Laureate from December 2006 to March 2009, is the author of six collections of poetry. Her newest book is Then, Something (Tupelo Press, fall 2009). Her fifth collection, Duties of the Spirit (Tupelo Press, 2005) won Jane Kenyon Literary Book Award for an Outstanding Book of Poetry and was a semifinalist for the Glasgow Prize. Her first book, Necessary Light (Utah State University Press, 1999) was awarded the 1999 May Swenson Poetry Award, judged by Mary Oliver. Her book Small Songs of Pain (Pecan Grove Press, 2003) is a collection of poems triggered by Chagall’s illustrations of LaFontaine’s fables. In addition she has published two chapbooks: Lives of Others (Oyster River Press, 2003) and Greatest Hits (Pudding House Press, 2003).

Pat, a retired social worker, has won the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award and was twice a semifinalist for the Discovery / The Nation Awards. A graduate of Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, the Hartford College for Women, and the University of Connecticut School of Social Work, she was also awarded an honorary BFA from the New Hampshire Institute of Arts. A member of the New Hampshire Writer’s Project and the Monadnock Pastoral Poets, and a Touring Artist for the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, she currently resides in Walpole, NH.

Advanced Praise

The Valparaiso Poetry Review has posted 2 excellent and in-depth reviews of Duties of the Spirit by New Hampshire Poet Laureate Patricia Fargnoli. They appeared in two different issues of VPR and each is well worth the few minutes it tales to read them. Edward Byrne’s review reads in part… “…[A]gain and again, readers are repeatedly impressed by Fargnoli’s refreshing images of nature – the surrounding landscape and its animal inhabitants, the borders between wilderness and civilization, or the long course of coastline that separates the land-locked speakers in the poems from the vast openness of the ocean before them. Readers are particularly rewarded with poems revealing instances and experiences where contrasting elements of different habitats meet or the distinct environments come into conflict, as well as when an individual resident of one world trespasses upon another.”

To say that Michael Milligan of the Valparaiso Poetry Review likes Pat Fargnoli’s Duties of the Spirit is to commit a vast understatement. His review reads, in part: “… Fargnoli so adeptly welcomes us into her world that we find ourselves deeply engaged at the outset, and identifying utterly with the poet. Her sense of place is impeccable – describing, indeed re-creating the physical and emotional landscapes through which she travels, Fargnoli fastens us securely to our own. Concurrently, all countries become the same country, all vistas the same vista – the boundaries between reader and poet dissolve and for a time we inhabit the same realms.”

Latest in the long line of praise comes a review from North American Review: Echoing Thornton Wilder who says “one of the duties of the spirit is joy, and another is serenity,” Fargnoli adds “the third must be grief.” These poems are an ineluctable mix of these three feelings, always with lovely and delicate imagery and language; the poet and the speaker find consolation in nature, beauty in the conflicts of city, resiliency and hope in the midst of aging—radiant revelations of a life well-lived. Ever “the existence of laughter which persists like a miracle.”


fluentascension.com posted a review of Patricia Fargnoli’s Duties of the Spirit which sums up simply and enthusiastically with: “How many honest books of poetry are out there? I don’t know. But this is one of them. Grab it!”


Web Del Sol Review of Books reviews Duties of the Spirit.

The 2006 New Year’s Day edition of The Providence Journal (RI) featured a Patricia Fargnoli (Duties of the Spirit, 2005) poem in Tom Chandler’s “Poetic License” column.

The praise just keeps coming. The most recent Duties of the Spirit review says… “These poems are written with serene grace… Fargnoli has found a striking, poetic voice that is above all deeply honest.” Comstock Review has the full write-up at http://www.comstockreview.org/criticspen.html

The Governor and Executive Council of New Hampshire has appointed a new poet laureate. Pat Fargnoli of Walpole is a poetry instructor and the author of three poetry books.The job comes with no pay and the appointment lasts for five years. So why do it? Well, they’re poets. As Ezra Pound said “writing poetry is like dropping a feather into the Grand Canyon and waiting for the splash.” NH Outlook’s Chip Neal spoke with New Hampshire’s newest poet laureate at her town’s library. Read the full article in the Portsmouth Herald and see the New Hampshire Poet Laureate interviewed on New Hampshire Public Television: http://www.nhptv.org/outlook/sprogramdate.asp?prog_num_id=1261.

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-932195-21-7