Lynnell Edwards

covet (k\u00fah-vit)v. tr.: to desire, esp. to desire eagerly, to wish for, long for. As in to covet anotherÆs belongings, the ghosts of households and fixtures, their voices or warnings. Ex: she coveted the fine table, the rich furnishings of her neighborÆs home. As in to covet the past, a lost year, a lost life or one not lived. Ex: turning the photograph of her parents over in her hand, she imagined their happiness and coveted what might have been. As in to eagerly wish for the health, well-being of one for whom responsibility is given, or a child. Ex: she coveted, above all, happiness for her sons. Or, to want that (i.e. person) which one may not have, desire to possess another. Ex: thou shalt not covet.

As a writer of drama and short fiction, Edwards’ first collection of poetry is influenced by the character sketches of her earlier prose works, while maintaining a strong sense of lyricism. Like her influences, Sharon Olds, Rainer Rilke, and Sylvia Plath, Edwards’ poetry derives force from its candor and observational simplicity. A Kentucky native, Edwards continues in the tradition of great pastoral voices such as Robert Frost, drawing from his metaphorical, lyric and structural paradigms. Reading The Farmer’s Daughter evokes fields of space, filled with light and soft shadows.

With The Highwayman's Wife, Lynnell Edwards's fierce and brazen poems breathe new life into well-known myths and tales, giving a new, bold voice to characters such as Medusa and Helen of Troy. Equal parts graceful and audacious, Edwards's poems capture her genuine love of language while maintaining a charming style all their own.

The Bearable Slant of Light asks what the burden and gift of madness brings to a family, to our world.

What can we bear and what can we lift when a beloved, when our world, is light-struck and mad? The Bearable Slant of Light documents a web of clinical assessments, medications, the terrible beauties of delusion, and the fragile gifts of darkness. Poems that reach across the history of writers and artists who fought and sometimes lost their own battles against mental illness are set against the urgencies of our anxious world and the intimate struggle of one family.