Laughing Gas: Poems New and Selected, 1963-1990

Ruth Whitman has been described as "a notable poet on the American scene" by the Boston Sunday Globe, and "a graceful poet, celebrating events of her life with charm, wit, and intensity" in Library Journal. Once again she strikes a universal emotional chord with a provocative volume of new and selected poems from the past three decades, reflecting her experiences as a daughter, wife, mother, lover, rebel, creator, and survivor. A candid self-portrait, Laughing Gas offers great insight into one woman's understanding of the world. In addition to her personal reflections, Ruth Whitman has broken ground in writing book-length lyric narratives in the voices of women from other times and places. In Laughing Gas, she continues to look to heroic women whose lives have taught her about courage and the ability to survive the rebellious Lizzie Borden; the nineteenth-century pioneer, Tamsen Donner; the Israeli parachutist, Hanna Senesh; and dancer Anna Pavlova. Whitman 's use of the extensive narrative lyric, with its beautiful analogies to music and song, gives her a broader scope in her longer works, as well as transforming and illuminating the lives of those about whom she writes.