She was educated at the University of Washington (Honors BA), the University of Toronto (MA Medieval Studies) and the University of Michigan (MFA). “Reading through Nightingale, one is struck by Rekdal’s marriage of the past with the present, her fusion of more old-school modes with contemporary, forward-thinking poetics… Rekdal rewards patient reading, trusting the reader to go back and crack open Ovid for a full view of the book’s rich, tapestry-like allusiveness.Paisley Rekdal was born in Seattle, Washington to a Chinese-American mother and a Caucasian father. “Rekdal reveals so much about artmaking, trauma, and the role of poetry through the gloss in this labyrinthine collection.” - AGNI “Rekdal’s is relentlessly heartbreaking and intense, but also full of the pleasures of closely observed detail and imagination given free rein.” - Publishers Weekly, starred review It’s the kind of thing we might get from a short story but that our notions of poetry too often seem to preclude (Rekdal’s poems, while unmistakably poetry, often excel at prose virtues)―a commitment to illusion based on its potential to hold something valuable and true.” -Jonathan Farmer, Kenyon Review

“Geoffrey Hill once praised what he referred to as ‘the sensuous intellect,’ and that seems to be what moves Rekdal (in both senses of the verb) most often in poems… end in generous, small deceptions, uncertain transformations, and beauty. She revels in detail but writes vast, moral poems that help us live in a world of contraries in which ‘we hold still for the camera, believing / it will shore up time, knowing it won’t.’ These are some of the best lyric poems being written today.” -Craig Morgan Teicher, Los Angeles Times “Rekdal is a poet of observation and history, one who carefully weighs the consequences of time. “Lovely, lyrical, bracing work a must-read.” - Library Journal, starred review

“Rekdal’s poetry is powerful and tender, sensual and muscular, honest and ultimately transformative.” - Booklist

Some books, old clothes, and college papers, Into its wood crate and high up onto a shelf Shooting stars in reds and saffron, the figure Perhaps unconscious gift of her grandmother.ĭrove home from the gallery, took a shower,įrom her father: her grandmother’s Singer Was this why her cousin had been chosen, to make Stand in her, as her last date in college Were a man’s hands gripping a slender figureįor legs, as if the limbs had been snatched She stared a long while at what she thoughtīut the more she looked, the more clearly Showed her sculptures in a converted barn: The last, deliberate ways her grandmother asked

Intimate by Paisley Rekdal