Harvesting Darkness 2019-2023

Robin Morgan’s latest collection is a tour-de force: poetry that thrills the intellect and stirs the emotions. Robin shares her joys and intimacies which take centre stage and laments ‘the ringmaster’s desertion’ as death hovers in the wings and aging unfolds, 'while laughing at the pain / through the gridlocked traffic in my brain.' Light and shadow, sleep and wakefulness, holding tight and letting go, regret and contentment, order and chaos, battle it out simultaneously through the interplanetary and domestic worlds.

Harvesting Darkness is Robin Morgan’ s eighth poetry collection, furthering a tonal arc begun with A Hot January and followed by her recent Dark Matter. She is a recipient of the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts Prize in Poetry as well as numerous other honors, and her work has been widely translated. She has also published four books of fiction, including the recent novel Parallax, and nine books of nonfiction on social justice issues, primarily feminism, plus her now-classic Sisterhood anthologies.

I. REAPING These Hands 3 Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Bag Lady 5 The Ringmaster’ s Desertion 6 The Ceiling 7 Regret 9 Giverny in New York 10 The Taxidermist 12 ‘ The Fish’ 13 The Will 14 Pearls 15 II. THRESHING An Idea of Disorder 19 The Wager 21 Terms of Art 22 Elegy for a Husband 24 A Sighting 25 The Frequency 26 Lacemakers 29 Sailing on the Lake of Mars 30 This Worthless Act 32 The Winter Solstice 33 Necropolitans 34 Simple Choices 36 III. WINNOWING The Last Door 39 The Other Side 40 Icicles of Brine 41 Three Variations in A Minor Key 42 1. Waltz 42 2. Etude 44 3. Nocturne 45 The Old Woman Is Talking with Death 46 Certain Evenings 50 Falling Awake 51