Poetry. IN THE BODY OF OUR LIVES, Jeanne Wagner's second full-length collection of poems, looks back on a Cold War-era childhood and its effect on the construction of a self. Refusing both sentimentality and censure, the poet shines an unflinching light on a home characterized by alienation, stringent Catholicism, shadowy alcoholism, and the inescapable attitudes and historic events of the 1950s. We proceed by images—the stitching up of Frankenstein's monster, cups wobbling on a dinner table, a child's desire to wear her clothing inside out—until we realize that it is a life that is being crafted. With intelligence and vivid language, Wagner writes of the body as a perpetual stranger, yet, illuminated by subtly shifting qualities of light, the body remains a home, the housing of life itself.

Author City: BERKELEY, CA USA

Jeanne Wagner is the recipient of several national awards, including the 2009 Briar Cliff Review Award and the 2011 Inkwell Poetry Competition, judged by Mark Doty. Her poems have appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, Nimrod, Cincinnati Review, and Mississippi Review. In addition to IN THE BODY OF OUR LIVES, she has four other collections of poetry, including The Zen Piano-Mover, winner of the 2004 Stevens Manuscript Award. She lives in Kensington, California.