I Was Bonnie and Clyde

As technology and consumerism inch to the forefront of society, I Was Bonnie and Clyde illuminates small collisions between life and death.

In Kasischke's newest collection, every moment contains an infinity: the mundane in the monumental, and the monumental in the mundane. I Was Bonnie and Clyde illuminates small collisions between life and death, from "that last suitcase circling / its last loop / for all of eternity" to "the mole / hauled out of the ground / by the dog / to die in the sun." Ghosts haunt and heighten these poems as they draw upon the independent weariness of women throughout history: Bonnie Parker, Lady Godiva, Amy Winehouse, a handbook's unnamed perfect hostess. Lovingly self-effacing, Kasischke evokes vulnerability, disbelief, and tragedy with a quiet, conversational reverence. With wordplay and exclamation, lament and ironic humor, these poems invite as they reflect, reaching out to a forbidding world.

Raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and currently living in Chelsea with her husband, Laura Kasischke is the author of twelve collections of poetry and nine novels. Space, in Chains (2011) won the National Book Critics Circle Award and Where Now: New and Selected (2017) was longlisted for the National Book Award. Kasischke is the Theodore Roethke Distinguished Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, and she has received many honors for her works, including the Juniper Prize, multiple Pushcart Prizes, and the Rilke Poetry Prize. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Kasischke's novels The Life Before Her Eyes, Suspicious River, and Be Mine have been adapted for film. Kasischke's books have been widely translated and are particularly well-received in France.