Dying for Beauty, Poems.

Whether paying tribute to literary icons such as Walt Whitman and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, or examining global and cultural degradation, Wronsky proves to be a poet of sharp wit and endearing wonder. The crowning jewel of Dying for Beauty is "Desdemona," a nearly book-length lyric that alternates between meditation and dramatization, between discourse and incantation. "I started out thinking I was writing an elegy for the earth - from my own self, in my own neighborhood, with its crack addicts and war-like helicopters, its poverty and ?lthiness…And yet also, here I was with a new daughter and this love in me, equal to nothing else."

"Formally, the poem ['Desdemona'] brings into its amplitude and openness material that could be inert, but is lifted always by rhythmic urgency and a faultless, inventive music.…Wronsky is also trying to think through the poem, reason passionately through its issues of language, gender, fear and loss."-The Boston Review

Gail Wronsky received a BA and an MFA from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. from the University of Utah. She is the author of two books of poetry and teaches at Loyola-Marymount University in Los Angeles.