Pattiann Rogers has won acclaim as one of the most original voices in contemporary American poetry. The poems in her new collection, Holy Heathen Rhapsody, embrace and embody the forces of the Earth and the creative power of its lifeforms in all the wildness of their varieties. Love in these poems is a force infused with the same creative power and intensity, the purest manifestation of the will-to-be. This vision and its making contend that even a shadow or a floating seed, a frond of green or a midnight spider, even a mongrel dog, wind over water, the human voice, the human witness, peace and weapons, all-every aspect and feature encountered-are fully endowed players in the dynamic music of the Earth.
