Keeper of Limits: The Mrs. Cavendish Poems

Stephen Dunn is a Pulitzer Prize poet and the author of seventeen collections of poetry, most recently Lines of Defense, Here and Now, and What Goes On: Selected & New Poems: 1995-2009. He is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

"The poetry here—the story here, the dynamic here—does what no other art form really can. It gives voice (in this case a voice in the plain style) to feeling and mood, to interiority, and the fragile ways we construct relationships out of private desires and public lies…. The theme of naming is…a theme about power, identity, shape-shifting, the fragmented self. All that is here. And all this is good enough reason to cherish this little book, its short glimpse into another's life, which, when rendered in poetry like Dunn's, becomes our life, too."—Pleiades

• Rachel Becomes Mrs. CavendishThe Young Mrs. CavendishMrs. Cavendish’s LamentMrs. Cavendish’s PoliticsMrs. Cavendish and the Period of MourningMrs. Cavendish’s DogMrs. Cavendish and the Winter GuideMrs. Cavendish and the American DilemmaMrs. Cavendish and the End of SecrecyMrs. Cavendish and the DancerMrs. Cavendish and the General MalaiseMrs. Cavendish’s DreamMrs. Cavendish and the OutlawMrs. Cavendish SpeaksMrs. Cavendish and the Learning CurveMrs. Cavendish Speaks of the UnforgivableMrs. Cavendish Returns From Inner SpaceMrs. Cavendish Comes to TermsMrs. Cavendish, Hope, and Other Four Letter WordsMrs. Cavendish and the BeyondMrs. Cavendish and the Democracy GameMrs. Cavendish and the Persistence of DesireMrs. Cavendish and the Keeper of LimitsMrs. Cavendish Becomes the Real ThingMrs. Cavendish and the Man Left Behind