Foxglovewise: Poems

Ange Mlinko, whose poetry is ＂irresistible＂ (Los Angeles Review of Books), opens our perception of other lives, or lives unlived.

Foxglovewise is, at its core, a response to the singular experience of the loss of one’s parents. It begins at an Eastern Orthodox Epiphany ritual in Florida and ends in a cemetery in Los Angeles. Yet, as with Ange Mlinko’s other books of poetry, the collection uses geography as a trope for the ways in which we try to map out our lives and make them legible, even as poetry, music, and paintings suggest that much of what happens, or matters, to us is ＂not on the maps＂ (not to mention ＂the apps＂). Whether it’s Europa borne over the waves, or gravestones bearing aliases rather than birth names, or books bequeathed to us by relatives in languages we can’t read, we live ＂up in the air＂ or ＂on the wing＂ and not in fixed coordinates.

Mlinko’s poetry is suffused with wit, erudition, beauty, and boundless energy. As Declan Ryan wrote of her work in The Times Literary Supplement, ＂A reader could be merely dazzled by all this surface stylishness . . . but then they would miss the heart beneath it all.＂ Foxglovewise is a direct line to the author’s heart.

Ange Mlinko is the author of several books of poetry, including Distant Mandate, Marvelous Things Overheard, and Venice. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Randall Jarrell Award in Criticism, and she has served as poetry editor for The Nation. Her essays and reviews have been published in The Nation, London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, and Parnassus. Educated at St. John’s College and Brown University, she has lived in Morocco and Lebanon, and is currently a professor of English at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where she lives.