Fire & Flower

by Laura Kasischke

The poems in Fire & Flower are about the images that hold the world together in the mind of a child, a woman, and the mother she becomes. The metaphors used to describe their lives are mysterious and frightening, and they accumulate in this collection as a full expression of the awe that makes us all live.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 1998

About the author

Laura Kasischke is an American fiction writer and American poet with poetry awards and multiple well reviewed works of fiction. Her work has received the Juniper Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Prize, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers, and the Beatrice Hawley Award. She is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as several Pushcart Prizes.

Her novel The Life Before Her Eyes is the basis for the film of the same name, directed by Vadim Perelman, and starring Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood. Kasischke's work is particularly well-received in France, where she is widely read in translation. Her novel A moi pour toujours (Be Mine) was published by Christian Bourgois, and was a national best seller.

Kasischke attended the University of Michigan and Columbia University. She is also currently a Professor of English Language and of the Residential College at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She lives in Chelsea, Michigan, with her husband and son.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m very glad I read these poems. This is one of her first works. I actually found them delightful. They would have caused me to read her later stuff even if I hadn’t already. Her use of image, motion and emotion is wonderful woven throughout these pages.

[Antonia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one I'll go back to. I read it a bit too quickly. I especially like the opening poem, "Hostess" and "Faith is a Long Commute," which I've read somewhere before.

A Long Commute

Faith is a long commute. Lots
of time to change
the station on the radio, time
to relieve the past, to consider

the future the way
the boy in the bust station
standing by the trashcan
the afternoon the bomb went off
must have had time to consider

his own hands carefully in his hand. The road

is narrow and it goes

straight through the gardens of Paradise. Lots

of soggy godhearts dripping
blood on their bloody vines. Behind me

a beautiful blind girl carries a Bible
home in a plastic bag, while

before me, an old
woman and her old mother
drive a Cadillac over
the flowers slowly.

[Ellie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the way Kasischke repeats images in new and different ways. Her long poems continue turning on themselves and the collection remains surprising.