Lola Haskins
Lola Haskins taught Computer Science at the University of Florida for many years, and is currently (since 2006) on the faculty of Rainier Writers Workshop, a low residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. She is the owner of a split heart, being passionate about both Florida and North Yorkshire. Most of the time, she lives in Gainesville, FL. Her most recent Anhinga Press book, The Grace to Leave (2012), was selected as one of the titles in our Van K. Brock Florida Poetry Series.
THE GRACE TO LEAVE
BY LOLA HASKINS
$17.00 (email us for availability)
Van K. Brock Florida Poetry Series (2012)
Haskins... understands Lorca's idea of duende, a passionate spirit, and evokes it naturally in her work. -- Booklist
She is certainly one of the few original voices among American poets. She takes big risks, and her poetry penetrates straight to the marrow of the bone. -- Midwest Quarterly
One longs to know this poet, to share her wise communion with whatever is alive, in all its manifestations. -- Alsop Review
She knows we are rooted to the earth but long for stars. And she's wise enough to know that love searches us out. -- Northwest Arkansas Times
She writes with the startling freedom and grace of a kite flying, and with the variety and assurance of invention that reveal, in image after image, the dream behind the waking world. -- W.S. Merwin
No American poet of her generation creates more brilliant images or more compelling voices. -- Susan Ludvigson
Lola Haskins' range is broad; her perceptions are always surprising. Natural objects surpass themselves... in this lively, adventuresome collection. -- Maxine Kumin
When poetry catches you by the throat and will not let you go, you know it is good. Lola Haskins' poems are captivating. -- Richard Eberhart
THE RIM BENDERS
BY LOLA HASKINS
$12.00. (email us for availability)
Van K. Brock Florida Poetry Series (2001)
Lola Haskins writes with the startling freedom and grace of a kite flying, and with the variety and assurance of invention that reveal, in image after image, the dream behind the waking world. -- W.S. Merwin
The voices in Lola Haskins' poems, even the voices of inanimate objects, evoke disturbance, make the heart grieve and rejoice for all it is haunted by. Nobody evokes the mysteries of beauty and the beauty of mystery the way Haskins does. -- Susan Ludvigson
[About Extranjera, also by Lola Haskins:] Haskins has a gift for juggling pain and pleasure, wisdom and fear, life and death, as she explores Mexican culture. She understands Lorca's idea of duende, a passionate spirit, and evokes it naturally in her work. -- Booklist
Poem from The Rim Benders
Spell for a Poet Getting On
May your hipbones never die.
May you hear the ruckus of mountains
in the Kansas of your age, and when
you go deaf, may you go wildly deaf.
May the neighbors arrive, bringing entire aviaries.
When the last of your hair is gone, may families
lovelier than you can guess colonize
the balds of your head.
May your thumbstick grow leaves.
May the nipples of your breasts drip wine.
And when, leaning into the grass, you watch
the inky sun vanish into the flat page
of the sea, may you join your lawn chair,
each of you content
that nothing is wise forever.
Poem from The Grace to Leave
The Sandhill Cranes
The blue air fills with cries.
The cranes are streams, rivers.
They danced on the night prairie,
leapt at each other, quivering.
The long bones of sandhill cranes
know their next pond. Not us.
When something is too beautiful,
we do not have the grace to leave.