Ragbag

by Elisabeth Stevens

RAGBAG is the twelfth book and fourth collection of poetry by prize-winning fiction writer/artist/critic Elisabeth Goss Stevens. RAGBAG focuses intensely, and often humorously, on the mundane but powerful things that dominate our everyday lives. Old clothes, zippers, an elastic sock, an empty refrigerator and even dust assume unexpected, sometimes threatening importance and underlying meanings. "Anyone reading Elisabeth Stevens' poetry will be drawn in by the depth of its emotion and simultaneous the perception is wonderfully acute." Josephine Jacobsen, 21st poet laureate of the United States "Comic irony is the lens through which Elisabeth Stevens views her world of spare romance and failed expectations as well as fulfilling moments of daily joy. Beneath the wry comedy is a terror at what has not been seen and which may yet reappear more boldly. The combination makes her poems teasing and quirky, and quietly but powerfully provocative." Martin Tucker, poet, critic and editor of Confrontation

60 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 3, 2010

About the author

The writer-artist-critic Elisabeth Goss Stevens was born in Rome, NY and now lives and works in Sarasota, FL. She is the author of fifteen books of fiction, poetry and drama, and she also writes film, drama, art and book reviews for newspapers, magazines and the Sarasota internet radio station Radio SRQ.com.

A graphic artist, she creates etchings, linocuts, ink drawings, silverpoints and illustrations for her own books and for periodicals. Represented by Stakenborg Fine Art of Sarasota, she has exhibited in New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Sarasota and throughout the country and is a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA) and the New York Society of Etchers.

A former art and architecture critic of The Baltimore Sun, she is also a former art critic of The Wall Street Journal, The Trenton Times and The Washington Post. Her free lance articles have appeared in Art News, Art in America, The New Republic, The Atlantic, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Mademoiselle, Life, The Sarasota Herald Tribune and many other publications.

A graduate of Wellesley College, Stevens holds a M.A. with High Honors in Modern Literature from Columbia University.She has also studied at The Art Students League, The New School for Social Research, The Institute of Fine Arts of New York University, The Princeton New Jersey Art Association and Sarasota’s Ringling School of Art and Design.

As a writer, artist and critic, Stevens has received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, The MacDowell Colony, The Ragdale Foundation, Villa Montalvo, Yaddo and The Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

She is donating all of her personal papers to the John Hay Library at Brown University in Providence, RI. Her limited edition livre d’artistes ERANOS (2000) and SIRENS’ SONGS (2010) are circulated by itinerant booksellers Vamp and Tramp of Birmingham, AL and are available at Stakenborg Fine Art. These two artist’s books are now in the collections of Harvard University, The Boston Public Library, The New York Public Library, Princeton University, Brown University, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Texas at Austin.