In Darwin's Room

An artful new collection from a poet who sees the extraordinary within the everyday

In her tenth volume of poetry, Debora Greger looks outward from the broadmindedness of the interior. Whether she finds herself in Venice, in London, or young again in the sagebrush desert of her childhood, the reader may feel Greger is both there and not there—her landscapes are haunted by memory, even in the act of experience. Not shying from the raw or savage in life, not ignoring the small moments of salvation or grace, she finds in every room an entrance to another world. Darwin’s college quarters prove not far from his cabin on the Beagle. A dress shop in Virginia reveals itself a Federal parlor through which a battle of the Civil War was fought. Returning to old scenes with a new eye, Greger proves herself a poet of quiet cunning, of grand scenes and small awakenings.

Debora Greger is the author of nine previous books of poems. She has won, among other honors, the Grolier Prize, the Discovery/The Nation Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Florida and in Cambridge, England.