Something Whole

Desire's unexplainable swings between grasping and letting go-such are the divergent courses of this collection. Short rhythmic pieces drenched with the moodiness of lust's confusions as well as the body's clear ache, are interspersed among longer free verse works which tell the stories of lovers in layers of loving and leaving. This is as much a book about desire's sighs as it is about its threads of sorrow.

"Your living risks all procedure- / For this moment / Unbehaved." From Something in the Living

These poems are conversations between women and men, between a woman and the landscape of her days and nights, between desire's flood and its flight. From the sensuous wanderings of both a woman's longings and the freedoms of her inner life, Jessica Rigney's poems ease us into the intimate space where one is given the choice to grasp or to let go. Both are equally satisfying.