Second Bloom is Anya Silver's fourth book of poetry. Her previous books are The Ninety-Third Name of God, I Watched You Disappear (2010), for which she won the Georgia Poet of the Year Award, and From Nothing (2016). She is Professor of English at Mercer University, and lives in downtown Macon, Georgia, with her husband and son. She is a poet, teacher, wife, mother, and metastatic breast cancer thriver.
"At the heart of these new poems is a longstanding determination to
make the most of time, and of mind, and of the immediate
surround--whether that immediacy is comprised of grief, or of joy,
or of perplexity. The deep, bass note here is attend! The
developing hunger is holiness."
--Scott Cairns, author of Slow Pilgrim: The Collected Poems
"'To bloom is so foolish / that it must be wisdom, ' Anya Silver
writes, in poem after stunning poem about living with cancer and
still finding words to praise this beautiful and ephemeral world.
These are the bravest poems you'll ever read, by a woman at the top
of her artistic game. Even though she knows that winter is coming,
Silver's words put out fresh green shoots. These poems will crack
open your heart."
--Barbara Crooker, author of Les Fauves and Barbara Crooker:
Selected Poems
"In lines saturated with colors and delicious with sneaky rhymes,
in elegies and ekphrastic poems, in liturgical poems and hymns to
ordinary things in ordinary time--a slinky green dress, a son's
light-brown hair, a grape popsicle on the tongue after days of
hospital fasting--Silver gives us life's pain met time and again
with pleasure and feast, rather than with despair. Although 'the
roses in second bloom / know what's coming, ' they bloom
nonetheless. To read this book is to witness Silver seeking, and
finding, holiness around every corner."
--Melissa Range, author of Scriptorium and Horse and Rider
"Underneath the bees and birds and blossoms of this fine
collection, Anya Krugovoy Silver reveals the stings and flights of
joy--the transience of this our life and the tender hope of a life
to come. Her eye and ear find beauty in the darkest places. To read
her is to know firsthand the meaning of the word redemption."
--Paul J. Willis, author of Say This Prayer into the Past
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