Dream Cabinet by Ann Fisherwirth

Dream Cabinet by Ann Fisherwirth

A compilation of poetry of great beauty and searing honesty, this book consists of two long experimental sequences: the title poem “Dream Cabinet,” set on an island in Sweden, and an eloquent account of the poet’s first marriage entitled “Answers I Did Not Give to the Annulment Questionnaire.” Exploring the full cycle of human life, this collection responds to compelling personal, political, and environmental issues of modern times while remaining aware of the evanescence of all mortal experience.

“Many American poets have written. . ‘the autobiographical lyric.’ Very few poets have written it with such fierce and stinging accuracy.” —Robert Hass, MacArthur Fellow and winner of the NBCC and National Book Awards

“Every poem Ann Fisher-Wirth writes is a sort of love poem, a love poem of the most incandescent and risky and reckless and sensual sort, a love big enough to take in the world and conjure the erasure of everything so beloved.” —Cecilia Woloch, poet, Carpathia

“Even as they contemplate the persistence of pain and the 'battening down [it takes] to survive,' these gutsy lyric poems leave us with a sense of abundance.” —Chana Bloch, author, Blood Honey and Mrs. Dumpty

Ann Fisher-Wirth teaches English and environmental studies at the University of Mississippi. She received the Rita Dove Poetry Award and two Poetry Fellowships from the Mississippi Arts Commission. She has also received the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. She is the author of Blue Windows and Five Terraces. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi.