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Rough Honey

Selected by Mark Doty from over one thousand manuscripts for the APR/Honickman First Book Prize, Melissa Stein's Rough Honey is a startling, sensuous collection. These poems speak of fragility and power, the contradictions of pleasure, the bruises we bear. With remarkable range, they carry us from a whitewater rafting calamity to the "torrents of wheat" on a family farm; from a peepshow's "manageable storm of boredom and sex" to a passionate fall from grace in an orchard. By turns buoyant and forlorn, Rough Honey's characters both long for and abandon the hope of true connection, of home, in a world where “everything is rented.” But their struggles are rendered in language so radiant, so mellifluous, it can’t help but hint at the possibility of transcendence, the sheer sweetness in being alive.

From "Want Me":

Lemons crystallized in sugar, glistening

on a blue-glazed plate. The rarest volume

bound in blood leather. A silk carpet

woven so finely you can't push a needle through,

that from one edge is the silver of a leaf

underwater, and from the other bleu lumiere,

first frost on the cornflowers. A duet for cello

and woodsmoke, violin and icicle. Tangle of

black hair steeped in sandalwood, jasmine,

bergamot and vetiver and jewelled

with pomegranate seeds . . .

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 96
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780977639595
  • Genres
  • poetry
  • Release date
  • 2010