Description
Danon’s peregrinations occur within the context of our own times—of a planet grown increasingly hot, a pandemic as cruel as an inquisition, of hotheaded and often coldhearted politics of America, as she contends with personal loneliness, isolation, guilt, and longing. How, she asks us, can we make and find the fire that warms, sustains, and illumines us?
American poet Ruth Danon hates and fears the cold in all its forms – literal, metaphorical, external, internal. In TURN UP THE HEAT she ventures into the chill and explores as well as its problematic opposite. In poems that range widely in form and style and that travel through place and time, Danon introduces us to St. Anthony, who stole fire from the devil and heated the icy desert, and heretic and genius Giordano Bruno, whose prescient astronomical vision led him led him to be burned at the stake. As she moves from Renaissance Italy to modern Sardinia and frosty upstate New York, from the desert to the domestic, Danon’s peregrinations occur within the context of our own times—of a planet grown increasingly hot, a pandemic as cruel as an inquisition, of hotheaded and often coldhearted politics of America, as she contends with personal loneliness, isolation, guilt, and longing. How, she asks us, can we make and find the fire that warms, sustains, and illumines us?
Poetry. Jewish Studies. Women's Studies.
Author Bio
Ruth Danon is the author of three previous books of poetry: Triangulation from A Known Point (North Star Line, 1990), LIMITLESS TINY BOAT (BlazeVOX, 2016), and WORD HAS IT (Nirala, 2018.) Her critical book, Work in the English Novel, was reissued by Routledge in 2021. She has published widely in the United States and abroad. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2002, Resist Much, Obey Little, (2017), Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice (2022) and will appear in the Poetry is Bread Anthology. She is founder of Live Writing: A Project for the Reading, Writing and Performance of Poetry. She teaches through Live Writing and for New York Writers Workshop. Since retiring from New York University in 2017 she has lived in Beacon, New York.
Author City: BEACON, NY USA