Where Are the Snows takes its title from the famous refrain of François Villon's 15th Century poem "Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past." Like that poem, the book functions, among other things, as an ubi sunt, Latin for "Where are they?" as in "Where are the ones who came before us?"--the beautiful, the strong, the virtuous, all of them? In keeping with that long tradition, these poems offer a way to think about life's transience--its beauty, its absurdity, and of course its mortality. Allusive and associative, anti-capitalist and unapologetically political, aligned somewhere between comedy and anger, this poetry juxtaposes the triumphs and tragedies (mostly tragedies) of our current age with those of history, and--by wondering "Where are they?"--explores the questions of where we are now and where we might be going.
KATHLEEN ROONEY is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, as well as a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a collective of poets and their typewriters who compose poetry on demand. Her most recent books include the novels Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, and her criticism appears in The New York Times, The Chicago Review of Books, The Brooklyn Rail, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay, and teaches at DePaul.
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"The tragedy of existence is such that if you don’t recognize the absurdity, you’ll never have any fun." NEW INTERVIEW with @KathleenMRooney on her poetry collection WHERE ARE THE SNOWS, out from @TxReviewPress on 9/7! Read it here! https://t.co/5ReeU3d6XB
TRP: The University Press of SHSU publishes books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Distributed by the Texas A&M University Press Texas Book Consortium.
*Where Are the Snows* by @KathleenMRooney now available in eBook! Start reading today! #WhereAretheSnows #books #ebooks #reading #texasreviewpress https://t.co/zKspLWxTCP
Bks @713Books, PLEASE BE ADVISED @northwesternup, DIRECT SUNLIGHT @BloomsburyPub @TortoiseBooks https://t.co/c81kdMcfrC #WGA @nugradwriting @milehighMFA
Starred two of my favorite stanzas in @KathleenMRooney’s poem “Pedestrian Access” in her very funny, moving, witty, 5⭐️ new #poetry collection WHERE ARE THE SNOWS #fridayreads #amreading. https://t.co/zXlKPKAh14
"Where Are the Snows is somehow desperately tender and wickedly incisive at the same time. Kathleen Rooney manages a smart, fierce, and intelligent take on contemporary life that everyone should read. It is a generous book that invites a reader in, and generative in the way that good poetry always is. Read a couple of pages of this book and you need to put it down and go make something, whether a poem or a sculpture or a major life decision, as you prefer. Any of the three would be in the spirit of this wild and wonderful work."
--Kazim Ali, author of The Voice of Sheila Chandra