Poetry. The work in Mary Leader's third collection, BEYOND THE FIRE, does not conform to any one habitation, nor aesthetic persuasion, nor name. On the contrary, just about every poem invents its own territory and its own terms. Some poems are straightforward narratives, while others repeat spells and castings. Many are figural; some are classical; some even aspire to anonymity. The book is designed to range the globe and fathom the centuries, albeit, in the end, the poet's settlement is but a momentary locality. Yet, if the beings who dwell in this book did have an infinitive, it would be "to survive."

Author City: PAWNEE, OK USA

Mary Leader began writing poems in the midst of a career as a lawyer in her home state of Oklahoma, first as an Assistant State Attorney General and later as a Referee for the Oklahoma Supreme Court. She is the author of two award-winning books in the United States: Red Signature, a selection of the 1996 National Poetry Series, published by Graywolf Press in 1997; and The Penultimate Suitor, winner of the 2000 Iowa Poetry Prize, published by the University of Iowa Press in 2001.