Böcker av Rosalie Moffett

A brilliant and lithe collection of poems making space for the resolve and hope of motherhood amid consumerist dreams and nightmares.Consumerism—its privations and raptures—seep into all aspects of contemporary life. “Who knows me / as the search bar does, which holds / sacred its grasp of me / as a creature of habit?” probes Rosalie Moffett, reckoning with algorithms, with marketing and capital. But Making a Living isn’t just about the trappings of materialism—it’s also about the fraught trials of trying to bring forth life in a double-dealing America where all sources are suspect.Shrewdly balancing the likes of Scrooge McDuck and HGTV, ancient Roman haruspicy and the latest pregnancy technologies, this collection arcs ultimately toward reinhabiting the present, refusing to look away—on seeing as a method of prayer and a power against capitalism’s threats to love, motherhood, reverence, and nature. Militant and profane, gentle and generous, full of desire and cunning, Moffett’s poetry is a singular entry in our conversations around enduring modern life and daring to make new life in the process.

Sometimes June in Eden occupies a garden in a wild landscape. Other times, we''re given a terrain where the coveted tree is one that hides a cell tower, where lungs are likened to ATMs and prayers are sent via text message. Rosalie Ruth Moffett''s debut collection of poetry, June in Eden, questions the human task of naming in a time where there are "new kinds of war that keep / changing the maps," where little mistakes-preying or praying, for instance-are easily made. The heart of this book is an obsession with language, its slippages and power, what to do when faced with the loss of it. "Ruth," says our speaker, is "a kind of compassion / nobody wants anymore-the surviving half / of the pair of words is ruthless." There is, throughout this collection, a dark humor, but one that belies a tenderness or wonder, our human need to "love the world / we made and all its shadows."Rosalie Moffett''s June in Eden gives us a speaker bewildered by and in awe of the world: both the miracles and failures of technology, medicine, and imagination. These darkly humorous poems are works of grief and wonder and give us a landscape that looks, from some angles, like paradise.