Overview

Nunc et in ora mortis nostrae, the final words of the Hail Mary Prayer (Now, and in the hour of our death) cast a pall over many of the poems in this collection. Here can be found gimlet-eyed meditations on mortality, whether learning of an old lover's terminal diagnosis while mid-spoon in lobster bisque or falling in love with a dying leaf; whether on a first date on 9/11 or contemplating the jaw-dropping homicide rate in his homeland of Venezuela; whether being in the CCU himself or observing a beloved's early onset Alzheimer's-death is omnipresent. And not only corporeal death but the death of love, which he experiences aboard a ferry, in a sauna, on a city bus, from a pond as snowy winter herons take flight. Still, amidst such sorrow and such dour contemplations, these poems fly the banner of hope, of survival, of blossoming after trauma, reminding us that Life-with a capital ""L""-goes on as usual, like the birds living at the Home Depot that disregard us mortals as they go about the business of living: twittering, swooping, and pooping. The poems in ""guilty as an orchid,"" if we let them, can serve as a road map that leads us to self-discovery. They can map out for us a path to internal illumination, redemption, renewed hope, and the love reawaking in us.

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Reviews

""Eloquent, sophisticated, musical, candid, engaging in all those ways... The best moments are the plainest: for example, in 'an ode to extra-corporeal oxygenation & an almost elegy, ' part v, with its understated, lucid account of the Sharpie stigmata and the interaction with the nurse... and the plainness of the sexualized god in part ii."" -Robert Pinsky, Poet Laureate of the United States, 1997-2000, Winer of the PEN/Voelker Award, the William Carlos Williams Prize The fearlessness and grace of Richard Haney-Jardine's guilty as an orchid has moved me again and again. Each poem is charged with grief and yearning, the poet ""a tern exiled/to a vast, unrelenting sea of hope."" These luminous poems trace the emotional reality of eros, loss, mortality, and mourning. Politically and historically alert, the spiritually defiant, queer voice of guilty as an orchid insists that beauty, whether or not it suffices to save us, is essential. -Richard Hoffman, author of People Once Real ""'Home? Where's home?' Richard Haney-Jardine asks in one of the gorgeous lyric gems that compose guilty as an orchid. And it is this quest-and the at times welcome relinquishment of it-that lifts his lush, exilic stays against confusion into their properly thrilling vivacity. By turns erotic, blunt, witty, cheeky, and always formally exquisite, Haney-Jardine's poems venture their wilding flights and metamorphoses and still fasten themselves to the heart, the bones, the body, at home-if anywhere-in that dazzling paradox."" -Daniel Tobin, author of The Mansions ""At once sensual and mystical, playful and mournful, earthbound and transcendent, Haney-Jardine's poetry teeters thrillingly on the razor-thin edge between the tangible world and what pulses, quietly but urgently, under surfaces. Reading these poems feels like being led by the wisest of guides on a journey across decades and continents, over land and sea, across the barriers of language, into the annals of literature, and coming home, again and again, to the plain and tender truths of the human heart. I finished this collection feeling more alert, more alive, and more determined to live my life with my eyes wide open."" -Nicole Graev Lipson, Pushcart Prize-winning author of Mothers and Other Fictional Characters

Author Information

Richard Haney-Jardine, born and raised in Venezuela, grew up speaking and writing in Spanish, English, and French. At 15, he came to the US to study at Phillips Exeter Academy, where he worked individually (albeit briefly) with Gwendolyn Brooks, Jorge Luis Borges, and Thom Gunn. He received a full scholarship to and was graduated from Harvard in 1985 with a degree in both creative writing (poetry) and comparative literature. At Harvard he studied with Carlos Fuentes, Helen Vendler, and Seamus Heaney, who served as his one-on-one tutor. He was likewise awarded a full scholarship to the Sorbonne for a master's degree in literature of the French Enlightenment, graduating in 1987. In 2019, aged 55, he enrolled in Emerson College's MFA program in poetry, working with Pulitzer-Prize winner Megan Marshall, award-winning poet Daniel Tobin, and renown poet and memoirist Richard Hoffman. At 60, he began seeking professional publication, and since then his poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, on the websites of The Academy of American Poets and Winning Writers, as well as in the 2024 anthologies. HABITS: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and One Page Poetry, among other publications.

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