Lip

In this stunning fourth collection, Kathy Fagan expands her ongoing engagement of voice and persona across the borders of both traditional and experimental poetic lines. A book of monologues, portraits, and arias, Lip directs our attention to the sometimes literal ropes and pulleys of the human stage, those operating just out of sight and earshot: the understructure and the undervoice. Fagan's speakers--historical, anonymous, and often subversively female--hold forth, hold back, enfold and unleash in forms as multiply textured as their experience. Always, hovering at the mouth of the vessel, in the margin of speech, is lip: anatomical and botanical, sexual and slang, servile and insolent.

KATHY FAGAN is the author of three previous collections of poetry: The Raft, winner of the National Poetry Series; MOVING & ST RAGE, winner of the 1998 Vassar Miller Prize for Poetry; and The Charm (2002). Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, FIELD, Ploughshares, The Colorado Review, The Laurel Review, and The New Republic, among many other publications, and has been anthologized in collections such as Poet’s Choice, The Extraordinary Tide, and Writing Poems. The recipient of fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the NEA, and the Ohio Arts Council, Fagan teaches in the MFA program at The Ohio State University, where she also serves as poetry editor for The Journal.