Darkened Temple

Mari L'Esperance is a graduate of the Creative Writing Program at New York University, where she was a New York Times Company Foundation Creative Writing Fellow. Her earlier poetry collection Begin Here was awarded a Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press Chapbook Prize. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in several print and online journals and anthologies, including Beloit Poetry Journal, Many Mountains Moving, Poetry Kanto, Prairie Schooner, and Salamander. L'Esperance's honors include two Pushcart Prize nominations and residency fellowships from Hedgebrook and Dorland Mountain Arts Colony. She lives and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area.

"Mari L'Esperance accepts all of the responsibilities inherent in the use of language by a serious poet: these poems are faithful to history, to memory, and to conscience, acknowledging the pain implicit in any thoughtful life, even as they celebrate its joys and sensual beauties."—Edward Smallfield, poet and coeditor of Apogee Press "In The Darkened Temple, Mari L'Esperance enacts the process of defining a self out of fragments of cultural and personal history, the traumatic disintegration of that self, and its subsequent painful rebuilding: by turns narrative, chantlike, fractured, and lyric, these tender, terrifying, and frank poems fight their way into song."—Jane Mead, author of The Usable Field "In its conception, in its craftsmanship, in its moral bearings, in its production design, in its ambition, and, not least, in its humanity, it is a book that will resonate as only the authentic can."—Poetrykanto.livejournal.com "I urge anyone who cares about carefully constructed lyric poems to get herself a copy of this necessary book. I have read it three times and my inclination is to begin all over again."—Susan Rich, Alchemist's Kitchen blog "Richly textured and admirably diverse in its structures, Mari L'Esperance's collection of poems, The Darkened Temple, stuns as it edifies a craving for depth in modern poetry."—Glenda Bailey-Mershon, Women and Books blog "L'Esperance's lyricism is stunning. Her sense of line and image, perfection. The lover of poetry and the poet alike will appreciate the skill and talent evident in The Darkened Temple."Christine Stewart, jmww.com

• Acknowledgmentsfog : memory1.The Bush Warbler Laments to the WoodcutterAfter Reading of the Expatriate Writer's Death by Shipwreck: Margaret Fuller, 1850In the Valley of the KingsStrokeSomething Coming ApartKamakuraReturning to EarthThe Doll MakerPantoum of the Blind Cambodian WomenAnother HistoryDiagnosisTrioPrayer2.The Last Time I Saw HerThe SearchTrying to Carry ItThe ShoesCaughtWhere the Body Might Be, the Mind Follows--Dark HouseBeyond ItFinding My MotherForgettingTo Her BodyThe Book of AshGrief Is Deep GreenFor My Mother's BirthdayWhite Hydrangeas as a Way Back to the Self3.Begin HereWhat's PossibleAfter FireTwo MaplesThis Hour PassingTo My Father, Living for a Long Time in Another CountryThe Choices Not MadeLast Hour With His Dead WifeLongingMap of the WorldHappiness and Happenstance Share the Same RootEpistleThe Night GardenHow It HappensNocturneAs Told by Three RiversNotes