Contemporary Metaphysical

The award-winning poet Anne Carson reinvents a genre in Autobiography of Red, a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional recreation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present.

Artist Thea Bowman makes a lot of bad choices, attracted to the shadowy side of life. With her seafaring pal, Big Sue, the pair is unstoppable. From San Francisco to an isolated Bahamian island, to the nonstop pulse of Manhattan—Thea’s addictions spiral out of control. Only after crash-and-burning does she become willing to embrace her true nature: being a bridge, a conduit of Light of which she’d been foretold.

Sex, science and spirituality! These were the triad of influences on the poetry of the seventeenth century. Following the golden age of Elizabeth I this century was to be one of great tensions; between Parliament and the Monarchy, Canterbury and Rome, science and religion; a civil war, the beheading of a King, The Republic, The Restoration, and finally, the Glorious Revolution which deposed a King and firmly reasserted the Protestant ascendancy.