Ange Mlinko – författare

This is a book about the works that six twentieth-century American poets created in and about the state of Florida--or, in one case, refused to create. Those poets who nourished their muse on Florida's landscape, history, and myths in turn helped perpetuate those myths: they keep an idea of Florida alive in the cultural imagination and in the language. They were not regional poets, because they did not live here permanently. But they do contribute to a psychogeography: theirs is a Florida that one can access from anywhere in the world through the pages of their books. It so happens that these poets compose a chain of personal friendship and influence: Marianne Moore was friendly with Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop was friendly with Moore, James Merrill was friendly with Bishop, and socialized frequently with Harry Mathews when both had houses in Key West. Only Riding, who rose to prominence in the 1920s, gave up poetry around 1941, and moved to Wabasso in 1943 to live an isolated existence, stands apart. And yet there are correspondences to be drawn between her work and Merrill's, for instance. The word "ornament" is used by both biologists and literary critics to describe the extras of beauty; but whether it is the encumbrance of a peacock's tail or the profusion of metaphor, ornaments are also seen as "difficult." What is it about "difficult ornaments" that make poems surprising, distinctive, and enduring? And does a proximity to the tropics-nature's own laboratory-compel poets to reach for invention and experiment? Does Florida contribute to an "evolution" of poetics? That's what this book explores.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZEThe UK debut of a celebrated American poet whose work is as lyrical as it is radical.Foxglovewise is complex but inviting, profound but wry. It is firmly contemporary while also being in lively conversation with deep histories: 'Where do stargazers go in a city of light?' Mlinko takes us from a Scottish cemetery to a mangrove in Florida via a supercell storm in Texas. Along the way, her use of form and rhyme is as light as it is enlightening as she probes our all-too-human nature and pays careful attention to the quiet marvels to be found by looking carefully at right where we happen to be.'Mlinko is rarely less than dazzling thanks to the pleasure and rigor of her phrasing. . . layered, allusive, and intelligent poems. . . . There is a moving and unignorable sense of grief and loss beneath the surface, in an expertly managed balance with the luster of the vocabulary and music of these poems.' Publishers Weekly (starred review)'Mlinko delivers again on the promise of a richly rewarding smorgasbord of sound, image, feeling, and thought.' Diego Báez, Booklist'Image-rich [with] densely discursive textures [...] This is a big and imposing book, worldly wise but warmly open and giving.' David Wheatley, Guardian, Best Recent Poetry

“A fine-grained light like that of a nineteenth-century Danish landscape painting shimmers throughout these gorgeously tactile and tactful poems.”—John Ashbery“A heady heady brew—O’Hara conversation, Ashbery sophistication, Koch hilarity, Schuyler shapeliness, Guest adventures, Notley grain, Mayer utopia, Padgett whimsy, Oulipo oofs.”—Bob Holman, National Poetry Series judgeMlinko was hailed by Publishers Weekly as “one of the most exciting American poets under 40.” Her Starred Wire reaches across continents of language where, as in Borges, dream logic dictates an interactive, delirious exploration of art and childhood, place and possibility.Author of Matinées, Ange Mlinko lives in Brooklyn with her husband and young son.