A Wild Surmise: New & Selected Poems & Recordings [Paperback]

A Wild Surmise: New & Selected Poems & Recordingsis Eloise Klein Healy’s seventh book of poetry and the first that includes an audio component. Included are poems from all her previous collections, including her award-winning first collection,Building Some Changes, as well asArtemis In Echo ParkandThe Islands Project: Poems For Sappho. Healy’s work is immediately recognizable as poetry written by a woman under the influence of feminism, freeway traffic, wilderness (especially in the city), and a uniquely tuned sense of craft. Her work travels easily across time zones, mythologies, the politics of love, and the inevitable loss of family and friends. She searches for a lesbian tradition in literature, lamenting the erasure of lesbian writers and the fragmented history of their work. But Healy’s poetry is not without humor, nor does it shy away from such topics as baseball and the companionship of canines. Like life, poetry to her is “a wild surmise”—never totally translatable, but always worth the attempt.

The new book by Eloise Klein Healy,A Wild Surmise: New & Selected Poems & Recordingsbrings together nearly four decades of work immediately recognizable for its uniquely tuned sense of craft and searching, sensuous explorations of love, feminism, freeway traffic, mythology, baseball, and the lesbian tradition in literature.

—Natasha Trethewey