Gravity

Gravity is a full-length poetry collection that can be read as an autobiographical companion to Ms. Rosner’s novels. These prize-winning poems offer insight into the author’s background and reveal many of the inspirations for The Speed of Light, Blue Nude and Electric City.

GRAVITY published by Atelier26Books

REVIEWS

“A profound work of true beauty and mystery.”
~ Luis Alberto Urrea
author of The Devil’s Highway and The Hummingbird’s Daughter

“Daringly, disarmingly raw and honest, Rosner’s potent confrontation of the past and ambivalent acceptance of the present coalesce in a haunting, soulful portrait of grief, memory, belief, and comfort.”  ~ Carol Haggas, BOOKLIST

“Sharp, emotionally layered… brilliant in concept and execution… Rosner’s precise language, magnificent and unpredictable, guides the reader through an untangling of history, love, anguish, and ultimately, the hard beauty of revelation.”
~ Indigo Moor
author of Taproot and Through the Stonecutter’s Window

“This is a personal history that becomes, through Rosner’s unflinching honesty and unerringly precise images, universal in its import.… [Rosner defies] the sentimental even as she dares to be beautifully tender.”
~ Lynne Knight
author of Again

“Gravity is admirable for its transparency of feeling and understated precision. …Perhaps the truest test of any book is whether you feel compelled to share it with a friend.  By the time I was halfway through, I was eager to share it with many!”
~ Ellen Bass
author of Like a Beggar

 

 

EXCERPT

Gravity

sometimes I am Jacob and
sometimes I am the angel and
always I am wrestling
with God or with the idea
of God or with the idea
of myself wrestling with God

(there is always a risk
in the naming of
things in the naming
of oneself)

the stones in my pockets
weighing me down
are also holding me
steady
angels have no pockets and therefore can float

while I, who resist floating,
watch them rise with
something like envy and
something like rage

who can float in a time
like this, when the past
is still close enough
to touch and the sounds
of weeping linger so
clearly

isn’t it our grief that makes us real
makes us dimensional,
heavy on the earth?

I think of my grandmother’s
sweet hand, the weight
of it as she stroked my hair
to say good-bye, giving me
comfort because she was
the one leaving,

and her hand rinsed
me like water,
like falling water

INTERVIEW

In this week’s Late Night Interview, Atelier26 Books publisher M. Allen Cunningham and author Elizabeth Rosner discuss her autobiographical poetry collection, GRAVITY, a deeply personal exploration of family, language, memory and history from a daughter of Holocaust survivors. (Read the Interview)