Books

Orpheus in the Park  

Available now!

The Bunny & the Crocodile Press, 2005. (Full-length collection; 82 pages; paperback, perfect bound) $20.00

This long-awaited collection of poems is made up of two compellingly different yet intertwining strands. In one, Solari explores a variety of myths, climbing beneath the skin of classical heroes and villains to offer contemporary perspectives on these characters and their tales. The other strand consists of poems of celebration and farewell, written for the author's late parents, as well as in honor of relationships, illusions, and old selves that have passed on.

The Orphic, mythic poems here may wear masks, but they reveal the voices of self-knowledge and self-revelation. Rose Solari is a poet of accomplished emotion, in poems thoroughly felt and wholly thought-through, whether she is speaking in the tongues of gods or for those she loves. In whatever terms, nothing can disguise the tenderness at the heart of her story. -Stanley Plumly

I admire Rose Solari's poems for their steadiness in the presence of emotional challenge. She writes about the real things that happen to us, transforming them, by means of secure craft and loving attention to detail, into works of art that happen to us in more durable ways. -Henry Taylor

Selections from Myths & Elegies

Argonne House Press, 1999. (Chapbook, limited edition; 48 pp.) $8.00

This chapbook contains the beginnings of Solari's exploration of classical myths, including poems on Achilles, Aphrodite, Persephone, and Hephaestus, as well as a five-part sequence on the story of Cupid and Psyche. These are intermixed with more personal poems, which include meditations on love lost and found.

Rose Solari's brilliant and moving poems spring from a highly original fusion of technique, wit, spirituality, and rare passion. They show a poet working at the height of her powers. – Andrew Harvey

This is wonderful poetry, very evocative, sensual, and wry. Rose Solari is a masterful writer.
– Belleruth Naparstek

Difficult Weather

Gut Punch Press, 1994. (Full-length collection; 64 pp.; perfect bound) $12.00 *Winner of the 1995 Columbia Book Award for poetry, selected by Carolyn Forché

Difficult Weather navigates neighborhoods "more interesting than safe," as the writer takes us to the streets and parks, the bars and monuments of her native city, Washington, DC, and its suburbs. The poems here form a kind of coming-of-age narrative, a story of one young woman's attempt to salvage, though understanding, the positive elements of a tumultuous adolescence and early adulthood, while asserting a persistent faith in the value of human affection and in the power of art to transform and heal us.

Please Note: This title is temporarily out of stock, but can be pre-ordered now for shipment in early summer.

The "first infatuation," Rose Solari reminds us, is with "speed." Speed here is not the result of time over distance, but is the velocity of the heart as it takes us to our difficult and inevitable destinations. Solari is a poet of passion who writes with care and precision. Difficult Weather will delight and surprise us all.
-Michael Collier

The poignant tone often found in these pages is sometimes born of a roughness, of images wrested from some of life's dirtier windshields. Solari's willingness to risk such detail reminds me of the muted whispers of trumpeter Miles Davis, or the singing of the mature Billie Holiday. Like them, Solari has a deep understanding of the sound of language.
-Reuben Jackson

The Stolen World

ARTSCAPE Literary Arts Award, 1993 (Chapbook, limited edition; 20 pp.) $5.00 *Winner of the 1993 ARTSCAPE Publication Prize, selected by Tom O'Grady.

Sometimes unabashedly erotic, sometimes gently lyrical, this lively debut collection manifests some of the themes the poet would continue to explore: the value of the body's experiences and wisdom; the necessity for understanding, even in the midst of great pain; and the importance of claiming our personal histories, however unwieldy they may be.

There is a great deal of art that disguises art in these delicately crafted poems. From their often surprising and unpredictable openings to their quiet and wise close, each poem succeeds as a complete piece, a jeweled artifact; yet together they from a movement almost symphonic, an episode of love and loss, of struggle and compromise which turns life itself into art.
-Tom O'Grady, poet, from the judge's statement

Rose Solari's poetry collections are distributed by Alan Squire Enterprises, Inc. To order individual copies, please consult the list below for price and shipping fees, then mail your check or money order to the following address:

Alan Squire Enterprises, Inc.
4948 St. Elmo Ave., Suite 208
Bethesda, MD 20814
Attn: Poetry

For bulk orders, contact (301) 530-2896
For questions about your order, call (301) 530-2896

Shipping details and costs:
All books mailed within the U.S. will be sent first class.
Postage and handling fees: For a full-length volume, $3.00; for a chapbook, $2.00.
Check and money orders should be made out to Alan Squire Enterprises, Inc.

Note: Chapbooks are small collections of poetry that are stapled or sewn rather than perfect-bound, and are usually issued in limited editions.