SYNOPSIS
Robin Morgan's work, celebrated for its vindication of the female experience and its evocation of the zeitgeist, is here intensely personal and powerful.
In this, her sixth book of poems, prize-winning poet Morgan undertakes a radical departure from her previous work, as she locates the landscape of her vision in the stark isolation of a self confronting love's aftermath, its losses, and its undeniable betrayals.
In a rare blending of lyrical style, accomplished form, and political passion, Morgan breaks a seven-year poetry silence, a "dark night of the soul," in which her voice emerges markedly different, and powerful in new ways: "living / no more in structures my early years defined."
These haunting verses will linger in the minds of readers as they sound the poet's singular passage through a private hell of despair, the madness of a "hot January," to a place of furious peace, in which the artist weeps "to recognize the self I'd fled to find."
The result is "A collection of strikingly memorable poems . . . in pace, diction, idiom, Morgan slices emotion raw. Yet, strangely, these are poems you will want to read to read aloud when you feel in need of joy" (THE WOMEN'S REVIEW OF BOOKS).
REVIEWS
“Morgan proves that exquisite poetry can be the most surprising gift of grief. A volume as proud, fierce, vulnerable, and brave as the poet herself.”--ALICE WALKER
“Love is impossible. If it were possible, it wouldn’t be love. This truth has never been more exemplified than in Robin Morgan’s most recent (and best) collection of poems. They hit square center. The only reason I don't set them to music is that I'd burst into tears during the process and smear the ink.”--NED ROREM
“Sassy, sexy, and cerebral.”--THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POETS NEWS
“If love is hell, A Hot January takes us into the very belly of the devil’s furnace. [A] forceful collection, an intense poetics.”--THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW
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