Magnetic North

This stunning collection from the award-winning poet Linda Gregerson examines the intersections of history, science, and art.
Touching on subjects as diverse as a breakthrough discovery in cell biology and the films of Ingmar Bergman, the anatomy of a possum and the Nazi occupation of Poland, Gregerson seeks to distill ?the shape of the question,” the tenuous connection between knowing and suffering, between the brightness of the body and the shadows of the mind. ?Choose any angle you like,” she writes, ?the world is split in two.” Longtime readers of Gregerson’s poetry will be fascinated by her departure from the supple tercets in which she has worked for nearly twenty years: Magnetic North is a bold anthology of formal experiments. It is also a heartening act of sustained attention from one of our most mindful American poets.

LINDA GREGERSON is the author of Waterborne, The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep, and Fire in the Conservatory. A recent Guggenheim Fellow, she teaches Renaissance literature and creative writing at the University of Michigan. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry as well as in the Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Ploughshares, the Yale Review, TriQuarterly, and other publications.
Among her many awards and honors are an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, two Pushcart Prizes, and a Kingsley Tufts Award.