The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep - Tapa dura

This is the second book of poems by a powerful, compassionate, and fiercely intelligent poet who writes about the boundaries between life and death, sickness and health, body and spirit. Gregerson's theme is our formidable encounter with mortality - the assaults of disease and bodily harm, the gradations of material and psychic well-being, domestic treachery, self-slaughter, failures of mind. Her emphasis is always on the resourcefulness of the human spirit, the intelligence of the body, the abundant loveliness of the created world. What readers will love about these poems - many of them centered on young children - is their combination of straightforwardness and complexity. Linda Gregerson is not an ordinary believer, but the rhythms and icons of faith pervade her work. Readers will also relish the music of Gregerson's poems and the remarkable use of line breaks and patterns on the page, which give her poems aesthetic as well as moral authority. These are not light verses, far from it

Linda Gregerson teaches at the University of Michigan.