Poetry. Connie Wanek's third book of poems, ON SPEAKING TERMS, is amusing, tender, and surprising. Herself a librarian in Duluth, Minnesota, Wanek's poems emerge from everyday objects—Scrabble, garlic, lipstick, hawkweed—and the landscapes, waterscapes, and severe winters of the upper Midwest. Readers will shove off in canoes, buckle on skis, set fishing nets in Lake Superior, and spend time in the real world of the imagination. Lit by startling metaphors, Wanek's work has been justly compared to Wisława Szymborska's for its wry wit and spare "Eastern European" sensibility.

Author City: DULUTH, MN USA

Connie Wanek is the author of three books—ON SPEAKING TERMS (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), HARTLEY FIELD (Holy Cow! Press, 2002), and BONFIRE (New Rivers Press, 1997)—and she has been the recipient of several awards, including the Willow Poetry Prize and the Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize. Most recently, she was named a Witter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress by United States Poet Laureate Ted Kooser. She lives in the country outside Duluth, Minnesota, but often finds herself in a green tent somewhere in the Boundary Waters wilderness.

Reviews and Other Links
author site
Stephen Burt in The New York Times