Sugar-Paper Blue

by Ruth Fainlight

The collection illustrates an increasing range of mood, subject, and technique. There are meditations on the art of poetry, observations of the natural world, and examples of her characteristic subtle analysis of the shifting relationships between women and men.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1998

About the author

Ruth Fainlight is a poet, short story writer, translator and librettist.

Fainlight was born in New York, but has mainly lived in England since she was fifteen, having also spent some years living in France and Spain. In addition to her own works, Fainlight has also provided criticism for BBC Radio, Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, and numerous other publications.

She was married to the British writer Alan Sillitoe (1928-2010) and has a daughter, Susan and a son, David who is a photographer for The Guardian. She lives in London.

She has twice been Poet in Residence at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.

Reviews

[Aloysiusi Lionel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before I read the second poem, I had the prejudice that this collection would be confined within the realms of motherhood, femininity and gardening sorts. But as soon as I read all the poems, I could say that this is a stupendous, remarkable book. Fainlight is no ordinary poet, her grasp of the mysterious reaches its mystical level through the wordplay and balanced delineations she infused in her musings and ruminations on love, life and the world. Dominated by narrative verses on city and country life and their similarities and distinctions, this book offered us a good number of lyric accounts of a life labored yet fully lived, through the poet's keen observation and research-based layout of what it takes to be a woman, a mother, a sister, and a lover of words and of the vicissitudes of the world.