pray me stay eager [Paperback]

These are wonderful, witty, wise poems in love with language and singing the music of the world with all its pleasures and piquancies, its oddities and tragedies. Ellen Doré Watson's vision is agile with quick shifts in direction and vivid juxtapositions. The poems inpray me stay eagercontain multitudes! —Ellen Bass

A dreamy voice turns dark and gritty as Ellen Doré Watson interrogates personal purpose in the face of looming mortality. Poems sway comfortably, fluidly through associative discourse, radiating and championing love and adoration, indulging in simple pleasures with high magnitude and deep resonance. These poems are musical and sing in a different register for Watson in her fifth collection.

Ellen Doré Watsonis the author of four full-length collections of poems, most recentlyDogged Heartsfrom Tupelo Press. Watson's journal appearances includeAPR, Tin House, Orion, Field, PloughsharesandThe New Yorker. Among her honors are a Rona Jaffe Writers Award, fellowships to the MacDowell Colony and to Yaddo, and a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship. Watson serves as poetry and translation editor ofThe Massachusetts Reviewand core faculty at Drew University's Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Poetry and Translation. She is the director of the Poetry Center and the Poetry Concentration at Smith College.