Temporary Beast

Interrogations, self-interrogations, examinations, cross-examinations, evocations--all thesemodes participate in these poems that actively refuse definition, since the poet, Joanna Solfrian, is inpursuit of her conscience, the one that asks about being alive, being dead, being a mother, being atree. I could say, "You name it," but she does in her distinctly marvelous, nodding-to-Lorca fashion, truly keeping the reader on metaphorical yet actual toes, reveling (perhaps the most crucial word) inthe powers of imagination that adhere to genuine poetry.--Baron Wormser, author of The HistoryHotelJoanna Solfrian's Temporary Beast shows a high mastery of surprising images and insights in poemafter poem. A sharp, enviable intelligence permeates all her lines; the poems push into the mysteriesof earthly and mystical love, but adhere to a rubric of recognition: the self in the feminine, the self inthe gravitational force of experience, and the self of possession and obsession. The speaker has anaffectionate temperament in the book that is very generous, and as Allen Grossman said, these arepoems about "something the way a cat is about the house." Solfrian's poems have an inherentstrangeness and joy that demand multiple readings.--Sean Singer, author of Today in the TaxiFormally dexterous and subtly wise, Joanna Solfrian's Temporary Beast offers more than temporarypleasure for both the mind and the heart. "Buried in these words are instructions for weeping,"Solfrian writes, and yes, this is true, but this book also contains instructions for so much else: how tolocate the divine & hold a flute; how to tend to a spouse, love a child, grieve a parent; how to delightin a lover's armpit & run topless through a cornfield. I'm enamored with Solfrian's dedication to thepen and her keen insight into how--by letting that pen move across the page--we gain access to adeeper, truer world.--Nicole Callihan, author of This Strange Garment--Joanna Solfrian