Anna Rabinowitz

Anna Rabinowitz Poems

Anna Rabinowitz Biography

Anna Rabinowitz is an American poet, librettist and editor. She has published four volumes of poetry, most recently, Present Tense (Omindawn, 2010) selected by The Huffington Post as one of the best poetry books of 2010.[1] Rabinowitz's other books include The Wanton Sublime: A Florilegium of Whethers and Wonders (Tupelo Press, 2006), Darkling: A Poem (Tupelo Press, 2001), and At the Site of Inside Out (University of Massachusetts Press, 1997). Rabinowitz's libretti include The Wanton Sublime, music by Tarik O'Regan, and Darkling, music by Stefan Weisman, both commissioned, developed, and produced by American Opera Projects. Darkling, the opera, was released internationally as a CD by Albany Records in 2011. Rabinowitz is currently editor emerita of American Letters & Commentary, where she was editor and publisher from 1990 to 2007. She has been a vice-president of the Board of Governors for the Poetry Society of America since 1992, and a vice-president of the Board of Directors of American Opera Projects since 2006. She was a faculty member at The New School from 1994 to 1997. She has been a fellow at Yaddo and at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has published in literary journals including Atlantic Monthly, Boston Review, The Paris Review, Colorado Review, Southwest Review, Denver Quarterly, Sulfur, LIT, VOLT, and Verse. Born in Brooklyn, NY, she earned her B.A. from Brooklyn College, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and her M.F.A. from Columbia University.)

The Best Poem Of Anna Rabinowitz

A Small Anatomy of Feeling

That which installs itself in the mind embraces sound

Rebounding,
rounding the fecund earth

Birth, as in what is not, as in one makes one,
is a mighty absence to understand

(and there are those who fail to get their lessons done)

Dun is the color of submission

Unfledged, she leafs through what has been nothing never
Never to be what she is/ or could /or hope to be
Bewitched by dictions (fictions) on the surface—

Face naming that which she must save, polished like an apple—

Apple of the eye, amour of town and street, apple of the cheek
Eaten with a dab of honey for a sweet year

Ear to who am I in the suddenly-arriving what-comes-next
Next to being, next to delivery, next to undergone
Gone parenthetical but now revived as her eye
Spies the sudden trespass of his unexpected welcome—

Succumbing, coming unto him in full sun this morning

Mourning what she need not beguile or lie beside

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