Mortal World - Hardcover

Sensuous, longing, grieving by turns, the poems of Mortal World are love poems in the widest and yet most intimate sense. They do not hold the world at a distance; rather, they taste, see, touch, and savor the things of the world, human connections chief among these.
These are poems about beginnings and endings, written from the emotional center of experience. In their evocative, widening arc of emotion they trace a path from passionate awakening to ambiguous estrangement to the complicated griefs that wait at the heart of even the deepest love. Still, they finally reach toward reconciliation, toward a reclaiming of the "province of joy."

Deborah Pope teaches at Duke University.