|
"I did not cry as much in the darkness / as I will when we part in the dimness / near the opening which is the way in for you / and was the way out for me, my love."
In this Los Angeles Times review of Linda Gregg's newest collection, All of It Singing: Poems, reviewer Dana Goodyear explores the subtle and intricate ways that Gregg weaves Orpheus and Eurydice into her work:
"The Orpheus story is a touchstone for Gregg...Eurydice is a figure of indeterminacy and in-betweenness, and her lighting cues -- dimness, 'nearly night,' violet-colored dark -- dramatize Gregg's poems."
"'Eurydice,' a beautiful early poem, portrays the young woman, all-knowing, at the moment she and Orpheus are about to leave what she describes as 'the strange world where I live.' She understands already that she won't go back to the real world..."
Linda Gregg was born in Suffern, New York, and grew up in Marin County, California. She has taught as a faculty member at the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop, Columbia University, the University of California at Berkeley and Princeton University.
She published her first book of poems, Too Bright to See, in 1981. Other publication include In the Middle Distance (Graywolf Press, 2006), Things and Flesh (1999), Chosen by the Lion (1994), The Sacraments of Desire (1991), Alma (1985) and Eight Poems (1982). Her latest collection is All of It Singing: Poems.