True False None of the Above: 19 (Poiema Poetry)

True False None of the Above poetically explores what it means to write read and teach literature in a world that--at turns--rejects embraces or shrugs indifferently at the spiritual. This is a book on the intersection of words and belief on how books mark and mirror our lives and how sometimes the journey we experience on the page leads us to faith. In True False None of the Above Maddox offers us a brilliant witty and vulnerable garland of poems. Here is the voice of a teacher a poet a mother and wife a woman of faith bearing witness to a deep and lasting Truth summoning--among others--the likes of Dante Hopkins Dickinson Eliot and Frost each calling out to the other often at scintillant cross-purposes all set choiring to this magisterial teachers gentle bidding. --Paul Mariani University Professor of English Boston College; author of God and the Imagination: On Poets Poetry and the Ineffable In the preface to her book True False None of the Above Maddox describes the experience of literature--whether reading teaching or creating it--as a confrontation with reality. And her poems indeed confront a range of uneasy truths from adultery and natural disasters to tooth extraction and raising teens. Maddox builds on the shared imagination of writers and readers richly and deftly to deepen and challenge our spirits. --Tania Runyan author of Second Sky In some of these poems Marjorie Maddox riffs on the poetry of other writers. Sometimes she sings like an angel even about illness and death. She wields forms brilliantly and she tells delicious stories about what goes on in her classroom. Everybody who relishes good poetry should buy this book. But if youre a teacher--or if youve ever sat in a classroom anywhere--True False None of the Above will make you laugh out loud. --Jeanne Murray Walker Professor of English University of Delaware; author of Shadow & Light: Literature and the Life of Faith In poem after poem Marjorie Maddox creates a rich environment in which the best teaching (and she is always a teacher) takes place in dialogue even though conversations are not always neatly resolved. But she also consistently and convincingly points to what we need: The real the spiritual the Real. --Jill Baumgaertner Author What Cannot Be Fixed Sage Graduate Fellow at Cornell University (MFA) and professor of English at Lock Haven University Marjorie Maddox has published ten collections of poetry--most recently Local News from Someplace Else--four childrens books the short story collection What She Was Saying and over 450 stories poems and essays in journals and anthologies. The recipient of numerous awards she also is coeditor of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania. For more information please see www.marjoriemaddox.com.