No Way Out but Through

Lynne Sharon Schwartz is the author of two previous poetry collections: See You in the Dark, and In Solitary. Her twenty-three books include the novels Disturbances in the Field, Leaving Brooklyn, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and Rough Strife, a finalist for the National Book Award. She has also published non-fiction, short stories, a memoir, essays, and translations. Schwartz is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (in fiction and translation), and the New York State Foundation for the Arts. She has taught widely in the United States and abroad, and currently teaches at the Bennington College Writing Seminars and the Columbia University School of the Arts.

A poet of poise and power. No Way Out but Through, Schwartz's third collection of poems, showcases some of this writer's many strengths. She's a stubborn anti-sentimentalist who can write wrenching elegies. She's an archivist of memories, a celebrant for the forgotten or nearly forgotten, who also writes eloquently of the undertow of oblivion. She's an anthologist of anxiety dreams. Irritated by Cordelia and partial to the Fisherman's Wife, she's a contrarian reader. At all times, Schwartz's poetic voice is piercingly honest. Her tough-minded intelligence leaves plenty of room for questions and regrets.