Breaking the Fever

Poetry. "Most poets seem to write poetry with the will, relentlessly suppressing every part of themselves that isn't ecstatic. Mary Mackey writes as a whole person-mind and senses-and the poems are marvelous"--Dennis Nurkse. Mackey's new collection of poems, BREAKING THE FEVER, extends Mackey's published works to 11 novels and 5 books of poetry. "The poetry in BREAKING THE FEVER offers truths both personal and political, visions both actual and imaginatively broad. Ranging in setting from her childhood Indianapolis to a Brazilian favela, in subject from ecological tragedy to marital passion to the thoughts of a thoroughly contemporary Leda, Mary Mackey's crisp-edged perceptions are set down in this new collection of poems with a sensuous, compassionate, and utterly unflinching eye"--Jane Hirshfield.