Ausable Press: About Laura Kasischke


BACK \| SELECTED POEMS \| AUTHOR EVENTS About Laura Kasischke Laura Kasischke is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Dance and Disappear (Juniper Prize, 2002), and three novels. Her work has received many honors, including the Alice Fay diCastagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Beatrice Hawley Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers. She lives in Chelsea, Michigan, with her son and teaches at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. IN HER OWN WORDS On poetry: "Poetry is about things that are intuitive. Poetry is always trying to go back to the very essence of life, to the first level of expression in language." "It’s not really style or technique in language that I’m interested in; it’s just how richly . . . landscape and the sensual world and the physical experience of being in the world is communicated. And that to me is a function of poetry." On her collection of religious icons: "I'm really attracted to the mysterious possibilities of life. I sort of rebel against the kind of bloodless, American, scientifically material world—that there is nothing that we don’t know, and if there is, what’s the sense of thinking of it." On gardening at her 150 year-old farmhouse near Ann Arbor "I always have the best of intentions to garden faithfully, but by the time summer comes around every year, I realize that my least favorite thing to do is weed. There is something wonderful about living in the country. Perhaps there is some kind of mystical connection between cultivating crops in a field and cultivating words on paper." (Quotes from Hour Detroit and A2 Lifestyle Magazine.)