Soul Cake
Lisa Russ Spaar

Lisa Russ Spaar’s seventh full-length collection of poems, Soul Cake, which takes its title from an ancient mummer/wassailer’s carol, leans with late-life, hibernal ecstasy into Spaar’s flood subjects: God hunger, soul-making, language, beauty, and an unquenched desire for the b/Beloved.  Bodily and mysterious, the poems wrest from their rich, sumptuous, surprising lexicon flashes of dread, beyonding, and gnosis. 

“Lisa Russ Spaar's brilliant lyricism lights up intricate surfaces and divines the depths in sonnets and carols tuned to every form of echo—rhyme, dream, heartache, etymology, memory. Exquisitely concentrated, haunted by epic 'wonder lust,' this is passionate metaphysical poetry to sate soul-hunger. ”
—Margaret Ross

Lisa Russ Spaar is the author of a novel, Paradise Close; six acclaimed collections of poetry, most recently Madrigalia: New & Selected Poems; and The Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotations of Contemporary Poetry, a collection of poetry history and criticism. She was a 2014 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. Spaar has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Library of Virginia Award for Poetry, and a Rona Jaffe Award, among other honors and awards. She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, where for many years she directed the MFA program. 

Trade Paperback / $20.00 (Can. $27.00) / ISBN 978-0-89255-642-7 / 80 pages / Poetry