Lovers' Almanac

Lovers' Almanac is a collection of poems that explores the varieties of love that human beings experience. Anchoring the volume is a 12-poem sonnet sequence featuring an intimate dialogue between a man and woman, each poem keyed to one of the months of the year. The book offers a range of poems engaging divine love, agapeic love, familial love, fraternal love, parental love, and homage, the love we bear towards artists, saints, and heroes. As the title implies, Lovers' Almanac also explores the concept of time and the ways in which love is grounded in the succession of seasons--both the seasons of the year and the seasons of life. These incarnational poems devote attention to embodied, incarnate love, evident in all times and places, and celebrate the power of love to open us up, save us from the prison house of self, and redeem us from the suffering human beings are heir to. Love accompanies us throughout the course of human life, from birth to death, defying loss, loneliness, aging, and our inevitable mortality. The premise of the book might be summed up by one of its epigraphs, echoing St. Paul: Love never fails.Here, among so many other poetic triumphs, are a perfect villanelle; a corona of sonnets celebrating a long marriage; a poem for the unfallen twin towers and the high-wire artist who once walked between them; and poems for Sylvia, Emily, and St. Flannery. The exquisite pleasure of reading O'Donnell lies not only in the encounter of perfect poetic forms, but also in the way her words cut to the heart and celebrate the ineffable, the ecstatic, and the contemplative highs of love and life.--Jill Baumgaertner, Professor of English, Wheaton CollegeAngela Alaimo O'Donnell teaches English & Creative Writing at Fordham University and serves as Associate Director of Fordham's Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. O'Donnell has published three collections of poems, Saint Sinatra, Moving House, and Waking My Mother, and two chapbooks MINE and Waiting for Ecstasy. Other titles include The Province of Joy, based on the prayer life of Flannery O'Connor, Mortal Blessings, a meditation on everyday sacraments, and Flannery O'Connor: Fiction Fired by Faith, a brief biography. Readers may visit her on the web at http://angelaalaimoodonnell.com/.