Science of Desire

by Erin Murphy

Erin Murphy’s Science of Desire investigates the ache of longing, the burn to feel and live, with a precision worthy of any laboratory. But these sensual poems’ laboratory is the entire world, and the trials their speakers undergo are anything but blind.

92 pages, Paperback

First published May 31, 2004

About the author

Erin Murphy is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, most recently Human Resources, Mother as Conjunction: Lyric Essays, Fluent in Blue, Taxonomies, and Assisted Living. Her areas of interest include poetry, creative nonfiction, demi-sonnets (a 7-line form she invented), docupoetics, prose poetry, labor & employment, medical humanities, the writing process, and humor. Her edited anthologies include Creating Nonfiction and Bodies of Truth: Personal Narratives on Illness, Disability, and Medicine, both of which won Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards, and Making Poems. Her latest anthology is The Book of Jobs: Poems About Work.

Her work has appeared in Ecotone, The Georgia Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, The Best of Brevity, Best Microfiction, The Writer's Almanac, and anthologies from Random House, Bloomsbury, Bedford/St. Martin's, and other university and independent presses.

Her awards include the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, the Rattle Poetry Prize Readers' Choice Award, the Foley Poetry Award, and The Normal School Poetry Prize.

She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona.

Reviews

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Erin's poetry means rereading because you keep going back for more.