front cover of Old And New Testaments
Old And New Testaments
Lynn Powell
University of Wisconsin Press, 1995
The Brittingham Prize in Poetry Winner of the 1996 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award Winner of the 1995 Norma Farber First Book Award "A radiance and clarity suffuses Lynn Powell's work." --Carolyn Kizer, Brittingham Prize Citation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "In Lynn Powell's poems we rediscover the meaning of the word 'testament,' for they give us a full testimony of a life, a family, a world. Whether writing of grief, or The Rapture, of a junebug or Aunt Roxy at the age of one hundred, she brings us intense, crafted narratives of self­knowledge, of facts so vivid they are painful, becoming signs and also wonders of life. These are poems of the recovery of spiritual desire. This is an extraordinary book, and an extraordinary new talent."--Robert Morgan "These direct, loving, sober poems are the change we need from most recent verse. The intensity of the opening poems in Old & New Testaments builds throughout the book until, almost intolerable, it transforms into profound acceptance, the quietness that comes of acknowledging both life and death. These images and rhythms need no persuasiveness beyond themselves, brightening our spirits with the clarity of reality."--A. R. Ammons "Lynn Powell's Old & New Testaments is a reclaiming of spiritual texts and traditions for a woman's life in the body--a life of childhood physicality, female sexuality, procreation, and nurturing love. Playful, tender, and wise, Powell brings her gospel learning down to earth. We can hail her poems in an old phrase with a new meaning: they are full of grace."--Alicia Ostriker Lynn Powell was raised in East Tennessee and educated at Carson-Newman College and Cornell University. She has worked extensively as a writer in the schools for the Tennessee Arts Commission, the New Jersey State Council for the Arts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and currently, the Ohio Arts Council. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, and other journals. She lives in Oberlin, Ohio.
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front cover of Season of the Second Thought
Season of the Second Thought
Lynn Powell
University of Wisconsin Press, 2017
Winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, selected by Robert Wrigley

Season of the Second Thought begins in a deep blue mood, longing to find words for what feels beyond saying. Lynn Powell's poems journey through the seasons, quarreling with the muse, reckoning with loss, questioning the heart and its "pedigree of Pentecost," and seeking out paintings in order to see inside the self. With their crisp observations and iridescent language, these poems accumulate the bounty of an examined life. These lines emerge from darkness into a shimmering equilibrium—witty, lush, and hard-won.
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