SUZANNE GARDINIER is also the author of the long poem The New World (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993) and A World That Will Hold All the People (University of Michigan Press, 1996), essays on poetry and politics. She was chosen by Lucille Clifton as winner of the Associated Writing Program's Award Series in poetry in 1992, and has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Lannan Foundation. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Manhattan.


"GARDINIER is above all a poet whose language and images are completely integrated so that, in Keats's words, every rift is laden with ore."—Adrienne Rich

 "SUZANNE GARDINIER takes a centuries-old poetic form—the ghazal—and injects its trademark themes of love and longing with words, references, metaphors and images that recall a more modern age: Manhattan, a country house, her lover's bedroom, the daily news. The resulting poems elicit a distinctly modern sexiness and political resonance from the inherently lyrical, lilting and musical form. With endnotes that reference Joni Mitchell, Moby Dick, James Baldwin, the Bible and numerous news articles, these are the poems of a writer and a reader who prizes revelations of all kinds. They demand to be read aloud, given as gifts and photocopied for friends. They are poems that remind us that poetry is for everyone."—NPR Morning Edition with Susan Stamberg