Liz Robbins’s poems have what only the very best poems have: a sturdy toughness undergirding their tenderness. Though the body spins dervishly—almost blindly—for love and beauty, it must also accept the jolts of pain, of physical labor. As with the flowering pear trees in On the Verge of Spring, we are ever “hopeful, / hopeless—with [their] smell of sweat / suggestive / of work and of fear.” There’s a refreshing honesty in these poems as well as a tremendous amount of skill with a sensuous, musical language. Each poem is a delight, something to savor.
   • Nance Van Winckel
      Author of Beside Ourselves

These poems explore with unflinching courage the human need for love and meaning. They are born out of that mysterious and painful tension between the hopeful heart and the world it must confront. This is a fine debut for a strong new voice.
   • David Bottoms
      Poet Laureate of Georgia

In her debut collection, Liz Robbins exhibits both versatility and formal dexterity. With poems that have the clarity of language one might find in Louise Glück, the edgy skepticism of Ruth Stone and the formal ease of Molly Peacock, Robbins’s work teases out and complicates our notions of what it is to be human. Poems like Portrait of Joe and Mosaic of Arshile Gorky startle with their power and arresting imagery; others, such as the villanelle Two Coins, articulate the profound wisdom of a seasoned mind. This book delights with its stunning metaphors (“the white skin of her throat / like cold air”) and its cynical but hopeful explorations of love.
   • Beth Gylys
      Author of Balloon Heart

About the Author:
Liz Robbins is the recipient of the First Coast Writers’ Poetry Award, judged by Robert Bly, and has been nominated for Best New Poets Prize as well as a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared in literary journals such as The Chattahoochee Review, The National Poetry Review, Natural Bridge and Potomac Review. Robbins earned her doctorate at Georgia State University, and is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Flagler College.

Hope, As The World Is A Scorpion Fish

On the near-island of Rovinj,
I have curled into a crab
like the one at the Aquarium.

I know the life blood of Croats
after tourism: suction cups
of squid sticking fast to the glass.

Nothing like St. Euphemia, who
stands at the highest peak
with her palm and wheel, her marks

of martyrdom. I feel well
rehearsed in that posture,
even though she remains 4th century.

How to be the bright copper statue,
untrammeled by a cool, dark bed?
Engulfed in sand and waves,

I find myself drawing a line.
But evening comes, and from six doors
down, the olive oil laughter of a vendor,

black-broomed, unmoneyed.
A lamp in the salted night air,
from gravity's side of the world.