Described by the late
James Dickey
as "one of the finest new poets to come along in years,"
Robert Wrigley
fulfills that early promise with this, his newest collection.
Reign of Snakes
is a book about desire, the soul's desire as much as the body's. As
Jane Hirshfield
said of Wrigley's previous book,
In the Bank of Beautiful Sins
(Penguin, 1995), "To read it is to unpeel a little further into the human, and into the wideness that holds the human—a splendid gift."
takes us to yet another level, deep into the daily devotions, "where the dark blows a kiss to night."
. . .
a frigid day in February and a full-grownrattlesnake curled to a comma in the middle of the middle of the just-plowed road. Ice ghost, I think, curve of rock or stubbed-off branch. But the diamonds are there, under a dust of crystals looming, impossible, summer's tattoo, the mythical argyle of evil.
—from "
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