Reckless Wedding

by Maria Flook

Reckless Wedding, Maria Flook’s first collection of poems, was chosen for the Houghton Mifflin New Poetry Series in 1982 and it also received The Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award. The New York Times “This poet has the power to see unexpected resemblances―a wonderfully unsettling mix of sexual contamination and back-attic mustiness.”

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Maria Flook is the author of the novels Family Night (which received a PEN American/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Special Citation) and Open Water, as well as a collection of stories, You Have the Wrong Man, and a memoir, My Sister Life: The Story of My Sister's Disappearance. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The New Criterion, TriQuarterly, and More Magazine among others. She is a 2007 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Award recipient, and is currently Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College in Boston. More information about Maria Flook can be found at www.mariaflook.net.

Reviews

[Danielle DeTiberus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes these poems are quite moving and sometimes they seem to fall flat on the page. Flook is at her best when images of the natural world and crisp, concise language move her narrative of relationships and love into surprising directions. As the title poem, my favorite, begins: “The house is white/ as a sheet/ under a bright stain./ Especially at night/ when stars bleed/ from mysterious heels/ then wander off.// You married me/ when outside/ the forsythia slit/ a thousand little wrists” (p. 51).