The short lyric poems in Larissa Szporluk's new collection, Isolato, search for meaning and beauty—for poetry—in an unpredictable and incomprehensible world. Their voices break from the contemporary preoccupation with autobiography, held together by language rather than a sustained narrative or plot. Yet the narrative fragments clearly evoke certain themes and moods: interaction of and struggle between the human and natural world; violence, particularly against women and children; alienation and betrayal; the mysteries of the universe, God, and death; and, of course, poetry itself.

Variously called a religious, a metaphysical, or a visionary poet, Szporluk has been compared to Emily Dickinson and George Herbert as well as to twentieth-century poets like Sylvia Plath, Mark Strand, and Louise Glück. Her work is concise, experimental, and challenging. Language and syntax are often elusive, the logic that of dreams or music, the imagery mysterious. The poems, once read, are not easily dismissed. Like the poet's “Deer Crossing the Sea,”readers find “the promise of nectar / haunts them forever, the shore pecked out / of their eyes, and there, in its stead, / something greater to catch, / a scent that would paralyze God.”

 Larissa Szporluk's first full-length collection, Dark Sky Question, won the 1997 Barnard New Women Poets Prize. She has poetry appearing in Best American Poetry 1999, theKenyon Review, Parnassus, the Journal, and AGNI. She is currently adjunct assistant professor of creative writing and women's studies at Bowling Green State University.

 “Possessed of a fine nervousness, these poems can't sit still. They cross and uncross their legs. They drum on the table with their red nails. They glitter and they ache. The energy of Isolato is intensely female, and Ms. Szporluk wonderfully unpredictable. I loved this book.”—Lola Haskins

“Something of the philologist invests these passages with linguistic trouble and gives to their cool surfaces a suggestion of considerable subterranean fire. One is grateful both for the threat of that real heat and for the uncommon chance to take pleasure in it.”—Scott Cairns, author of Recovered Body

 “Following up the debut Dark Sky Question, Szporluk puts the self's biological, sexual, oneiric and psychological discourses through a number of sinuous paces…Readers who imagine a much, much stranger Louise Glück will have some way toward seeing Szporluk's compelling, fluid methods and preoccupations.”—Publishers Weekly