Blue Venus PA

In Blue Venus, Lisa Russ Spaar explores the intimate relationship between the sensual and the sacred. Her nocturnal poems weave themselves into the very fabric of private fervorlyric, sexual, spiritualbeginning with "Dusk" and continuing on until "Dawn." Fierce and giving, Spaar's exquisite verse isolates essential moments of vulnerability and wonder. A series on insomniain the voices of some notable insomniacsis among the most moving extended sequences in recent memory. Elsewhere, she traces poetry back to its primordial rootsprayer, lullabye, mourning, exaltation. Propelled throughout by a resolute belief in the relationship between the human and the cosmic Blue Venus is "a brilliant new star in poetry's firmament" (Carol Muske-Dukes).

Lisa Russ Spaar directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia.