Poetry. The poems in BLACK SEEDS ON A WHITE DISH spring from the search for what is generated and discovered when loss and desire occupy the same space. But lamentation is not the primary focus—by destabilizing everything in its reach, loss disables rigidity. These poems shift widely in form and tone, and seeds invoke the creative germ that spurs the metamorphoses occupying them: "Nothing to do but let the form of things take over." Shapes themselves, including punctuation, become a language throughout.

Author City: SALT LAKE CY, UT USA

Shira Dentz's poems and stories have appeared in many journals including The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, Western Humanities Review, jubilat, Brooklyn Rail, The Black Warrior Review, and BOMBAY GIN, and have been featured on Poetry Daily and National Public Radio. She is the recipient of various awards including an Academy of American Poets' Prize, and The Poetry Society of America's Lyric Poem Award and Cecil Hemely Memorial Award. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and is currently Poetry Co-editor of Quarterly West, a Fellow at the Tanner Center for the Humanities in Salt Lake City, and is finishing her Ph.D. in literature and creative writing at the University of Utah. Before leaving for Iowa City and Salt Lake City, she worked for many years as a graphic artist designing music ads in New York City, and taught English in an inner city public high school. BLACK SEEDS ON A WHITE DISH is her first book.

Reviews and Other Links
Sima Rabinowitz @ NewPages
Joseph P. Wood @ Gently Read Literature
Erin M. Bertram @ Rain Taxi
Cindy Hochman @ Coldfront
Ann van Buren @ The Rumpus
Jenny Gropp Hess @ Tarpaulin Sky Reviews
Celia Bland @ Boston Review