Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream is a book haunted by the afterlife of medieval theology and literature yet grounded in distinctly modern quandaries of desire. Connie Voisine’s female speakers reverberate with notes of Marie de France’s tragic heroines, but whereas Marie’s poems are places where women’s longings quickly bloom and die in captivity—in towers and dungeons—Voisine uses narrative to suspend the movement of storytelling. For Voisine, poems are occasions for philosophical wanderings, extended lyrics that revolve around the binding and unbinding of desire, with lonely speakers struggling with the impetus of wanting as well as the necessity of a love affair’s end. With fluency, intelligence, and deeply felt emotional acuity, Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream navigates the heady intersection of obsessive love and searing loss.
Available from University of Chicago Press
“Passe la nuit, writes Connie Voisine in Cathedral of the North, her first magical collection of poems. The night passes—in the Acadian French of the tiny town where she grew up, as far North as the country goes) and day comes again, bringing each story closer to its conclusion, each character in the gaze of the book’s clear-eyed, word haunted narrator more precisely alive. What a blessing of language and what a brilliant gift this young poet has been given—to re-see the past, its nights and days, to re-animate the present, to dream it all, night and day, into these startling poems.” --Carol Muske
“Contains the raw, obsessive energy you like to see in a first book, a book that knows its subject intimately, takes it seriously and renders it humanely. It also contains some of the best American poetry I’ve see in a while, often reminiscent of early Forché: the same stark language, the deft use of language and metaphor . . . compelling and urgent, Voisine’s voice deserves to be heard. Cathedral of the Northreaches up with its bells and spires and shapes love and loss into song.” --Dorianne Laux
“Surely only in a virtuoso performance could we have stars ‘tighten to teeth marks on the freezing sky,’ then ‘thick as salt spilled for the trees/ to lick’ and finally a single ‘star, resting on a branch, a ring on its hand.’ They’re especially moving in the service of this exploration of what it means to be among ‘the unbeautiful few who can survive that far north.’” --Jacqueline Osherow
“The luminous details and emotional subtleties in these poems bring to mind Alice Munro’s short stories. They light the dark corners of familiar rooms, but also open onto inner and outer landscapes I feel I’m seeing for the first time. These are visionary poems in every sense of the word.” --Sharon Bryan
“Cathedral of the North succeeds in examining and accepting, with delicate attention, the knot of inherited love and anguish it claims as its own.” --Virginia Quarterly Review
“Voisine’s poetry is wholly unsentimental, tactile, and filled with unexpected beauty....this is a dazzling, brave, and surprising first book.” —Bookshelf
Available from University of Pittsburgh Press