Her Faithfulness

The poems in Liz Waldner’s Her Faithfulness surprise and sustain. The world they know is "daily harmed and harming," and they summon resources against its meanness: the natural world where sight of an indigo bunting or blue lizard presents "the kingdom of heaven," a fragment of song or local speech carrying memory and feeling. All of the themes and inventiveness of Waldner’s eight earlier books are part of Her Faithfulness, here condensed to their essence in poems wild and smart and joyful and wise near the end of their journey: "After a long time, I came to love’s house / where I was invited to stay."

Liz Waldner grew up in rural Mississippi and earned a BA in mathematics and philosophy at St. John's College and an MFA at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Her first book of poetry, HOMING DEVICES (O Books, 1998), came after an 18-year silence; since then, Waldner has published prolifically. Her recent books include A Point Is That Which Has No Part (2000), which won both the Iowa Poetry Prize and the James Laughlin Award, Self and Simulacra (2001), Dark Would (the missing person) (2002), TRUST (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2009), Play (Lightful Press, 2009), HER FAITHFULNESS (Miami University Press, 2016), and LITTLE HOUSE, BIG HOUSE (Noemi Press, 2016).