BOA Editions, Ltd., 2009

Cover illustration by Jonde Northcutt

Order Carpathia by Cecilia Woloch here

Well-controlled eulogies to her dying father in rural Kentucky, lush lyric and prose poems to lovers and former-lovers in Paris and various Eastern European countries, and compelling anaphoric-based narratives that meander between innocence and experience, body and soul – these are the motifs in Cecilia Woloch's stirring, new collection, Carpathia. Cecilia is, first and foremost, a relentless traveler (and watcher) of the human condition. Her poems risk the heart, teach and delight, and remind us that we won't leave this earth without our share of love and weeping.What reviewer Willaim Neumire said of her last collection Late, is true of Carpathia: “This collection has a little piece of pleasure for everyone. There are some lyrics in the purest, song-like sense, and there are some lyrical prose-poems that succeed on a more narrative level. This book is a grab-bag of good poems, and each page is a surprise.”
 

“Carpathia seems to me the truest, fullest expression of a soul in quest of its true home I’ve yet read. Cecilia Woloch receives the world right on her skin, responds to it with her whole physical being, and fearlessly, in all its mystery and beauty, and also in its sadness and cruelty and disappointment. There’s a headlong, rushing quality here, but a great sensual leisure, as well. It’s a wonderful book.”  —Mary Ann Taylor-Hall

“This is a gorgeous book by a poet who is passionately alive in the world.”  —Natasha Trethewey