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Bestiary
POETRY BY
Elise Paschen
“ The poems in Elise Paschen’s Bestiary explore domestic
preoccupations set against the backdrop of the wild-heartedness,
real and imagined, of the animal world,” praises the poet Jason
Shinder. In this modern-day Bestiary, or “Book of Beasts,” the
line between animal and human is thinly-drawn – the daughter
of a Celtic king, through love, is transformed from beast to human;
lovers take flight as moon and owl; manatees transform, before
the explorers’ eyes, into mermaids. This dynamic runs throughout
the collection: taking flight, hovering between air and earth,
plunging, and then resurfacing from water. The poems create a
constant engagement between what tethers us to our daily lives –
marriage, motherhood, raising a family, the loss of parents in old
age –and the desire for other worlds. Exploring notions of
transformation, these poems cross thresholds between animal and
human, between death and life.
Bestiary
Poetry by Elise Paschen
ISBN: 978-1-59709-131-2
Binding: Tradepaper
Size: 6 x 9; Pages: 80
Pub Date: March 21, 2009
Award-winning poet, Elise Paschen, creates in her third and most
complex poetry collection, work which is elegant and passionate,
preternaturally still and reckless all at once. Paschen displays a
variety of form and nuance – from ghazals to long-lined free verse
poems. Writing out of a distinct Western literary tradition, but
tapping into her Native American (Osage) roots, Paschen
celebrates the mythic, the unusual, the magical glimpsed in the
everyday.
Price: US $16.95
With Bestiary Elise Paschen comes into her own strength as a
poet, taking on the two great subjects of lyric poetry, love and
death. This volume beautifully contains its opposites: it is at once
the story of a young couple building their family and the story of
a daughter losing her parents, as well as a more mythic
undertaking, a tale of the animals who symbolize our psyches
and seem to foreshadow events in our human lives. One feels
Paschen’s Osage roots in these poems where she makes the deepest
emotions palpable through her stunning craft. In Bestiary Elise
Paschen creates a world at once recognizable and strange, lyrical
and fierce, gentle and bold.
—Molly Peacock
R e d H e n P ress • P.O . B o x 3 5 3 7 •
Granada Hills, CA 91394 • www .redhen.org
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Book Description
“The poems in Elise Paschen’s Bestiary explore domestic preoccupations set against the backdrop
of the wild-heartedness, real and imagined, of the animal world,” praises the poet Jason Shinder.
In this modern-day Bestiary, or “Book of Beasts,” the line between animal and human is thinlydrawn – the daughter of a Celtic king, through love, is transformed from beast to human;
lovers take flight as moon and owl; manatees transform, before the explorers’ eyes, into mermaids.
This dynamic runs throughout the collection: taking flight, hovering between air and earth,
plunging, and then resurfacing from water. The poems create a constant engagement between
what tethers us to our daily lives – marriage, motherhood, raising a family, the loss of parents
in old age –and the desire for other worlds. Exploring notions of transformation, these poems
cross thresholds between animal and human, between death and life.
Praise for Bestiary
The passionate, yet controlled, third volume from Paschen (Infidelities) pursues the likenesses
between human beings and other sorts of beasts: Paschen watches domestic animals, visits
zoos and backyards, and records the instincts that animate her, as lover, mother, daughter and
citizen. Husband and wife “share a wedded habitat”; a mother breastfeeding her daughter “would
like to buzz/ into the orchid of your ear,” while a manatee looks to the poet like “a mistaken
mermaid,/ on the brink of vanishing from sight.” Paschen offers sonnets, villanelles and even a
ghazal, in which butterflies in an exhibit “invent a sky beneath the dome.” Readers might
remember not the moments of pure description, but the difficult emotions Paschen describes
in her poems about marital love, motherhood and finally a daughter’s grief. The urn with her
father’s ashes dominates one poem, and her late mother’s career as a ballet dancer takes over
another: “Mother, when I was young, I watched/ you from the wings and saw the sweat,”
Paschen writes, saw “your gasp/ for breath. I thought it was your last.” If we are animals,
Paschen suggests, we are the animals who look hard at one another, the animals who remember
and who mourn.
—Publishers Weekly
Elise Paschen’s themes are human and essential: love and gestation and birth, the decline of
parents in old age — and in her skilled hands, these matters seem far from ordinary. Often her
poems engage us with stories, some taken from myth — Leda beset by Zeus in swan’s clothing,
a mad Irish princess tamed by a harp player. Others seem drawn from experience, whether
actual or imaginary: a woman thrown to the ground by a whirlwind, a family rescuing a fallen
nestling, an aged and afflicted mother recalling her youth as a dancer in Venice, a daughter
transporting a father’s ashes through airport security. Here are powerful lines, gracefully woven
into whole poems, positioned to last. Certain of them will haunt you. Read the lovely and
mysterious “Monarch,” first poem in the book, and right away you’ll see what I mean.
—X. J. Kennedy
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Red Hen Press
P.O. BOX 3537 • GRANADA H ILLS, CA 91394 • (818) 831-0649 • fax: (818) 831-6659
Author Biography
Elise Paschen is the author of Bestiary, published by Red Hen Press in February 2009, as well
as Infidelities, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, and Houses: Coasts. Her poems
have appeared in The New Republic, Ploughshares and Shenandoah, among other magazines, and
in numerous anthologies. She is editor of The New York Times best-selling anthology Poetry
Speaks to Children and co-editor of Poetry Speaks, Poetry Speaks Expanded, Poetry in Motion, and
Poetry in Motion from Coast to Coast. Former Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America,
Paschen teaches in the Writing Program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
News from
Red Hen Press
P.O. BOX 3537 • GRANADA H ILLS, CA 91394 • (818) 831-0649 • fax: (818) 831-6659
Additional Information
For additional information visit Red Hen Press’s web site at: www.redhen.org or Elise Paschen’s
web site: www.elisepaschen.com. To see Elise Paschen featured in an ABC news story, visit:
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/video?id=6707046
Events
For a complete listing of author appearances, visit Red Hen Press’s web site at:
www.redhen.org.
Review Copies, Author Interviews & Excerpts
To request a review copy, schedule an author interview, or obtain more information
regarding publishing an excerpt contact Ileanna Portillo, Publicist, at redhenpress6@verizon.net.
Examination Copies
Please refer requests for examination copies to the Chicago Distribution Center. They can be
contacted at 800-621-2736.
News from
Red Hen Press
P.O. BOX 3537 • GRANADA H ILLS, CA 91394 • (818) 831-0649 • fax: (818) 831-6659
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE APRIL 15 , 2009
Bestiary
by
Elise Paschen
Award-winning Chicago-based poet Elise Paschen, and editor of the New York Times bestselling anthologies Poetry Speaks to Children and Poetry Speaks, publishes her third and most
complex poetry collection, Bestiary. In this collection, she creates work that is elegant and
passionate, preternaturally still and reckless all at once. In this modern-day Bestiary, or “Book
of Beasts,” the line between animal and human is thinly-drawn. The poems create a constant
engagement between what tethers us to our daily lives— marriage, motherhood, raising a family,
the loss of parents in old age— and the desire for other worlds. Exploring notions of
transformation, these poems cross thresholds between animal and human, between death and
life.
A graduate of Harvard University, Paschen holds degrees in 20th Century British and American
Literature from Oxford University where she received her M.Phil. and D.Phil degrees. She is
also the co-editor of Poetry Speaks Expanded, Poetry in Motion and Poetry in Motion from Coast
to Coast, a program which places poetry posters in subways and buses across the country.
Paschen displays a variety of form and nuance–from ghazals to long-lined free verse poems.
Writing out of a distinct Western literary tradition, but tapping into her Native American
(Osage) roots, Paschen celebrates the mythic, the unusual, the magical glimpsed in the everyday.
In addition, Paschen is the author of Houses: Coasts and Infidelities, winner of the Nicholas
Roerich Poetry Prize. Her poems have been published in The New Republic, Ploughshares, and
Shenandoah, among other magazines, and widely anthologized. Former Executive Director of
the Poetry Society of America, Paschen teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago. Paschen will be a featured author at the 2009 Printers Row Book
Fair.
Bestiary
Poetry by Elise Paschen
ISBN: 978-1-59709-131-2
6 x 9;Tradepaper
80 pages
PRICE: US $16.95
Can a book so attached to death be filled with so much life? The answer is yes and Bestiary
proves it! It is focused also on form and light and wonder; a fine song of praise to living
things. All praise to this brave poet and these brave poems!
—Lucille Clifton