Generations, Pattiann Rogers' ninth book of poetry, consists of 55 poems concerned with the notion of generations of life, but "generations" in the sense of energy, change, replication, and continuity -- the entire process of coming or bringing into being and our various perceptions of that process. This book will appear from Penguin in June, 2004.

A Recent Review

"If only one word could be used describe Rogers' poetry, it would have to be cosmic because her ravishingly lyrical and imaginative poems embrace the vastness and interlocking wonders of the universe. Rogers' newest collection is positively stellar in its radiant beauty, fractal patterning, and uplifting vision of life's unity. Conjuring worlds within worlds as she draws our attention to the electron as well as the moon, she brilliantly evokes the perpetual orbiting, revolving, and spinning that generate everything from light to life's myriad forms to our sense of the sacred. By turns metaphysician and naturalist, spiritual pilgrim and trickster, Rogers writes with grand precision about weather, animals, plants, and landscape, but she is most concerned with revealing all that is hidden by composing brain-teasing juxtapositions that echo the paintings of Magritte and M. C. Escher. A spiral staircase morphs into a "galactic spiral"; a man riding a bicycle becomes an entire universe. "Earth and human together / form a unique being," Rogers observes, a profound bond she explicates in language as clear as starlight and alluring as flowers. A much-honored poet with a crucial perspective and universal appeal, Rogers belongs in every poetry collection and at the head of every must-read list." -- Donna Seaman, Booklist

A poem from the book: a traversing The easy parting of oaks and hickories, bays of willows, borders of pine and screens of bamboo down to the crux, grasses, bulrushes and reeds parting down to their fundamental cores, the yielding of murky pond waters, layer upon layer giving way to the touch of the right touch, the glassy, clear spring waters, bone and gristle alike opening as if opening were ultimate fact, the parting of reflection allowing passage, and the cold, amenable skeleton of echo, the unlatching of march becoming as easily accessible as the unlocking of mercy, as the revelation of stone splitting perfectly with the sound of the right sound, everything, a nubbin of corn, a particle of power, the pose of the sky relenting, and the sea swinging open like the doors of a theater giving entrance to everyone, no fences, no barriers, no blinds to the parting of the abyss, not bolted, not barred from the utmost offering of the dusk, enigma itself falling away until all may enter all and pass among them.