“Lisa Russ Spaar sounds like no other poet living today.”—Jennifer Chang, The Believer
“If this is what happens when poets write novels, they should all write them."
― Eleanor Henderson, author of The Twelve-Mile Straight and Everything I Have Is Yours
Part Beauty and the Beast, part monk meditation, part pulse-galloping thriller, part Salingeresque coming-of-age with an untamable femme lead, part intoxicated art school sex party, part goldenrod glow the morning after a storm—this novel illuminates how we can rescue others by allowing our own rescue. — Aimee Seu, Southeast Review
“Paradise Close is breathtaking novel—from one of the most exquisite poets of our day—has the dark power of a fairy tale. I read it all in one sitting, in thrall to the spell Lisa Russ Spaar casts.”—Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year and A Fortunate Age
“Urgent, hungry, and unabashedly sensual, Spaar arrives time and again at visceral and eviscerating epiphanies.”— Andy Nicole Bowers, Boston Review
“The poems are often erotic, but their sexiness is transformed by the greater questions and wonderment Spaar reaches tow
Paradise Close: A Novel
July 9, Beautiful and deeply moving
Paradise Close is a lyrical story of love, loss, and the profound longing to be seen. The author weaves a narrative that seamlessly blends past and present, inviting readers into the intimate—VERY intimate—lives of her complex, quirky, and endearing characters. Paradise Close vividly evokes a sense of nostalgia and reflection on the passage of time and the universal desire to be understood and recognized. As the characters grapple with their own identities and histories and the impact of their experiences across time, I was grateful that Spaar keeps the reader from getting lost in the timeline by giving dates and place to each chapter. With the undisguised voice of a poet, her lyrical prose makes this novel a spellbinding read and an excellent choice for book groups.
Orexia: Poems
In sensual new poems, Lisa Russ Spaar explores the physical and spiritual desires of late-middle age, showcasing as she does so her magical capacity to entwine the colloquial and baroque, the explicit and the ethereal.
Thrumming with the triune hungers of mind, mouth, and spirit, Lisa Russ Spaar’s fifth book plumbs daily life in order to transcend it, discovering and embodying the sacred and erogenous as it does so. Seductive and symphonic, Orexia is the latest glory by the “ringleader of a stunning lexicon” (Shenandoah).
Interviewer: Steven Barfield
Lisa Russ Spaar teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia, where she is an Associate Professor of English and Director of Area Program in Poetry Writing. She has received several awards, including the Academy of American Poets Prize at the University of Virginia in when she was a young poet and was then a finalist, in the National Poetry Series, , as a more established practitioner. Her latest book of poems, Satin Cash: Poems, is available from Persea Books, and her anthology All That Mighty Heart: London Poems was published by University of Virginia Press in as well. Blue Venus: Poems, Persea Books, Other works includes the anthology, Acquainted With the Night: Insomnia Poems, Columbia University Press, and three further collections of poems: Glass Town, poems, Red Hen Press, ; Blind Boy on Skates, Trilobite Chapbooks of the University of Northern Texas Press, ; Cellar, Alderman Press, Her poetry has regularly appeared in a prominent national and international journals, including Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Yale Review, Denver Quarterly, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She has r
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Paradise Close: A Novel
Paradise Close is a lyrical story of love, loss, and the profound longing to be seen. The author weaves a narrative that seamlessly blends past and present, inviting readers into the intimate—VERY intimate—lives of her complex, quirky, and endearing characters. Paradise Close vividly evokes a sense of nostalgia and reflection on the passage of time and the universal desire to be understood and recognized. As the characters grapple with their own identities and histories and the impact of their experiences across time, I was grateful that Spaar keeps the reader from getting lost in the timeline by giving dates and place to each chapter. With the undisguised voice of a poet, her lyrical prose makes this novel a spellbinding read and an excellent choice for book groups.
Orexia: Poems
In sensual new poems, Lisa Russ Spaar explores the physical and spiritual desires of late-middle age, showcasing as she does so her magical capacity to entwine the colloquial and baroque, the explicit and the ethereal.
Thrumming with the triune hungers of mind, mouth, and spirit, Lisa Russ Spaar’s fifth book plumbs daily life in order to transcend it, discovering and embodying the sacred and erogenous as it does so. Seductive and symphonic, Orexia is the latest glory by the “ringleader of a stunning lexicon” (Shenandoah).
Interviewer: Steven Barfield
Lisa Russ Spaar teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia, where she is an Associate Professor of English and Director of Area Program in Poetry Writing. She has received several awards, including the Academy of American Poets Prize at the University of Virginia in when she was a young poet and was then a finalist, in the National Poetry Series, , as a more established practitioner. Her latest book of poems, Satin Cash: Poems, is available from Persea Books, and her anthology All That Mighty Heart: London Poems was published by University of Virginia Press in as well. Blue Venus: Poems, Persea Books, Other works includes the anthology, Acquainted With the Night: Insomnia Poems, Columbia University Press, and three further collections of poems: Glass Town, poems, Red Hen Press, ; Blind Boy on Skates, Trilobite Chapbooks of the University of Northern Texas Press, ; Cellar, Alderman Press, Her poetry has regularly appeared in a prominent national and international journals, including Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Yale Review, Denver Quarterly, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She has r
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