Description
Poetry. In her third full-length collection, A SUNNY PLACE WITH ADEQUATE WATER, Mary Biddinger untangles past from present, through poems preoccupied with gentrification, imaginary coin-operated machinery, and an uncanny doubling of good and wicked selves. As "Some Dead Magic" testifies, "Even streetlamps couldn't help themselves. // Where could they possibly lead us? There wasn't / any magic left in the world, only stray newspapers." The poems of this book hope that history will somehow provide insight for our current moment, while acknowledging the necessary transformation of desire over time. Part nostalgia recast as seductive angst, part pastoral (and anti-pastoral), these poems explore small town legends in a landscape of longing, displacement, looming disaster, and unexpected joy.
Author Bio
Mary Biddinger is the author of seven full-length poetry collections, including PARTIAL GENIUS (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). She teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Akron and NEOMFA program, and edits the Akron Series in Poetry for the University of Akron Press. Biddinger has been the recipient of several Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and the 2019 Mid-Career Cleveland Arts Prize in literature. Her current project is a flash fiction novella about the adventures of two graduate school roommates in late 1990s Chicago.
Author City: AKRON, OH USA