Losing and Finding

Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry

by Karen Fiser, Lynne McMahon (Foreword)

Winner of the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry, 2003.

This collection of lyrical poems traces the narrative of the loss of love and intellectual powers and a groping towards a new life after a catastrophic illness. The poems describe suffering and the sudden loss of one’s prior life and powers, but they also celebrate the gifts that arise from the heart of suffering—the importance of the smallest things and the ability to pay fierce attention to them.

80 pages, Paperback

First published February 24, 2004

Reviews

[Marilyn McEntyre · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've once again reread these poems. I've shared them with friends and students and enjoyed them in new ways every time I return to them. High time to write a review. Though they offer a chronicle of loss and arduous recovery, they do much more than that: they invite readers to empathetic reflection; they enable readers to reimagine their own losses as moments when understanding enters through the cracks and light comes in at unexpected angles; they allow us to see how losses, over time, connect and intersect in epiphanic moments--in patterns that emerge with their own kind of sobering beauty; they season even the hardest things with moments of humor, reminding us that even in those hardest things a perspective is possible from which laughter may arise out of the depths. It's a good time, as we hear about losses of so many kinds with every morning's news, to read these poems, enter into others' sorrow, and also find a testimony and invitation to resilience. They are newly timely. And they are, even in their rich specificity, timeless.

[ren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a bit ambivalent about it at first, but I really loved the second section and became more and more attached to the collection as I continued reading. It was an interesting experience for me, reading poetry by a professor of philosophy, and I definitely felt like her poetry is more philosophical, self-reflective than just aesthetic. Also somewhat therapeutic to read too, I think.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great pieces of free verse that despite the "professional" reviews I would classify as narrative more than lyrical. Stories that deal with the experience and the aftermath of sever pain and disability.