A Rough Deliverance

A collection of poems from the author of Holding Breath: A Memoir of AIDS' Wildfire Days, A Rough Deliverance begins with poems the author wrote as an ambitious and conflicted 22-year old college student just learning to navigate her life on her own, a young woman who wanted nothing more than to be a "famous poet," and attended NYU's graduate poetry program in order to try to do that.

It closes with poems written by a woman thirty years older--in some ways very different, in some ways very much the same, perhaps wiser and perhaps not. She is not a famous poet, but she is someone who has loved deeply, witnessed the ravages of an epidemic from the "front lines," grieved, traveled extensively, made terrible choices and perfect ones, over-indulged and abstained, raised a wonderful son, wrestled with anger and shame about the past and fear of what's to come, and finally learned to see all of it as absolutely worthwhile.

This is a collection of poems that documents a ragged, imperfect, and ultimately joyful life lived one deliverance at a time.