Overview

Winner of the May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize   Set in rural England during and after the bubonic plague pandemic of 1348-1349, this verse novel drives to the heart of what we humans are capable of when boiled down to our very core in the struggle to survive - and how, in more ways than one, it’s not our intelligence or our resiliency, but love and the non-human animals that save us.

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9780872333604

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Reviews

Timely, remarkable, and unforgettable, these eighty-four sonnets are so well crafted that we cease to notice the form, swept away as we are by the current of the story and its song.--Meg Kearney, author of All Morning the Crows and The Ice Storm

Author Information

Richard Smith began life as an English major. After graduating from Princeton, he worked in publishing for twelve years, including stints as managing editor of The Hudson Review and World Policy Journal. In his thirties, he retooled as a clinical psychologist, earning his PhD from the University of Maryland, and now maintains a private practice in Washington, D.C. He is on the core faculty of the Center for Existential Studies and Psychotherapy, for which he gives presentations on plays and novels, ranging from Sophocles to Toni Morrison, exploring how an existential sensibility can lend these voices fresh urgency. He and his partner live with their two dogs, who inspired the sonnet-writing that led to this book.

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