Lanterns in the Night Market

Mary Morris is the author of three previous books of poetry: Enter Water, Swimmer (runner-up for The X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize), Dear October (Arizona-New Mexico Book Award), and Late Self-Portraits (Wheelbarrow Book Prize). Her work has been published in Boulevard, North American Review, Poetry, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, and Rattle. A recipient of the Rita Dove Award, Western Humanities Review Prize, and the National Federation Press Women’s Book Prize, Mary has been invited to read her poems at the Library of Congress, which aired on NPR. Kwame Dawes selected her work for American Life in Poetry from the Poetry Foundation.

“In the tradition of Elizabeth Bishop, Mary Morris poses questions of travel in her luminously attentive Lanterns in the Night Market. This peripatetic collection opens with a compelling invitation that also hints at a potential sadness, loss, or rootlessness. ‘Take my hand’ says the speaker. ‘The past is gone.’ What ensues is a gorgeous slide projector of place after place: ‘everything and and and.’ These are clear-eyed poems that gaze candidly at trouble and troubled places—taking in the complexities of history, politics, and environmental crisis. But these are also poems of immense gratitude—revealing a poetic joy within the gorgeously-rendered details and images. This is a lovely and powerful volume.”—Lee Ann Roripaugh, author of tsunami vs. the fukushima 50