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Lynn Emanuel

Lynn Emanuel Biography

Poet

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“The Sleeping I have imagined all this: In 1940 my parents were in love And living in the loft on West 10th Above Mark Rothko who painted cabbage roses On their bedroom walls the night they got married. I can guess why he did it. My mother’s hair was the color of yellow apples And she wore a velvet hat with her pajamas. I was not born yet. I was remote as starlight. It is hard for me to imagine that My parents made love in a roomful of roses And I wasn’t there. But now I am. My mother is blushing. This is the wonderful thing about art. It can bring back the dead. It can wake the sleeping As it might have late that night When my father and mother made love above Rothko Who lay in the dark thinking Roses, Roses, Roses.”

“To what or whom does Lizzie Harris direct the imperative title of her startling first book, Stop Wanting? To the reader, the narrator, to desire itself, or to lack? This is a work of complexly, ambiguously layered narratives and identities. The opening poem asserts I want to say what happened / but am suspicious of stories. These lines become an ars poetica for the whole of this painful and exceptional collection in which the unspeakable is stubbornly confronted by a searing eloquence. This is a commanding debut.”