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Elise Paschen is the author of three poetry collections: Infidelities (Story Line), winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, Houses: Coasts (Sycamore Press, Oxford), and, most recently, Bestiary (Red Hen Press). She is editor of Poetry Speaks to Children and co-editor of Poetry Speaks Expanded (Sourcebooks) and Poetry in Motion (Norton).Paschen teaches in the Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Elise Paschen s themes are human and essential: love and gestation and birth, the decline of parents in old age -- and in her skilled hands, these matters seem far from ordinary. Often her poems engage us with stories, some taken from myth -- Leda beset by Zeus in swan s clothing, a mad Irish princess tamed by a harp player. Others seem drawn from experience, whether actual or imaginary: a woman thrown to the ground by a whirlwind, a family rescuing a fallen nestling, an aged and afflicted mother recalling her youth as a dancer in Venice, a daughter transporting a father s ashes through airport security. Here are powerful lines, gracefully woven into whole poems, positioned to last. Certain of them will haunt you. Read the lovely and mysterious Monarch, first poem in the book, and right away you ll see what I mean.--X. J. Kennedy
