My Life in Heaven: 29 (FIELD Poetry Series) - Softcover

My Life in Heaven, the 2012 FIELD Poetry Prize winner, is "striking in its subtlety, complexity, and utterly distinctive voice," according to the prize judges David Young and David Walker. These moment-to-moment explorations of intimacy's intricacies use the power of the poetic line to illuminate the relationship of self to the beloved, nature, and the divine. This is a book of love poems, romancing the line between self and other.

My Life in Heaven will stun readers who admire the best of contemporary American poetry in the vein of Donald Revell, Brenda Hillman, Charles Wright, and Jean Valentine. Samyn's poems sing with the elusive fire of Emily Dickinson.

MARY ANN SAMYN is the author of four previous full-length collections of poems: Captivity Narrative, Inside the Yellow Dress, Purr, and Beauty Breaks In. Her awards include a Pushcart Prize, the Emily Dickinson Prize from the Poetry Society of America, and the James Wright Poetry Award from Mid-American Review. She is the Bolton Professor for Teaching and Mentoring at West Virginia University, where she teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing.