Worldling

Winner of a 1996 Whiting Award. In her fourth collection of poems Elizabeth Spires addresses the elemental subjects of life and of literature: birth death creation and intimations of immortality. The first section focuses on the experiences of conception pregnancy and childbirth from the points of view of both mother and child. The second section offers a reversal and reply in which the poems move out into a divided and divisive world. These poems are distinguished by an immaculate lyricism a pristine sense for the natural world and the rhythms of language.