New poetry collection by Rogoff

Jay Rogoff, lecturer in English, has written a new book of poems, The Long Fault (Louisiana State University Press, 2008).

Several events are planned in conjunction with the book's release:

• 7 p.m. Thursday, April 24, Borders, Saratoga Springs: reading and book signing
• 7 p.m. Friday, April 18, Red Fox Books, Glens Falls: reading, book signing, and wine event with two other poets
• 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 6, Saratoga County Arts Center: reading and book signing
• Thursday, Sept. 11, Skidmore campus*: reading

*Time and location to be determined

According to the publisher, Rogoff "explores how the disasters of human history scar the individual psyche and how our creative acts of art and love help us to resist this damage." The title of the book comes from the poem "Mysteries," a meditation on a mural in Pompeii, which contains a theme that surfaces through the collection: mortality and our resistance to it.

Above her head, the key-frieze yields to crumbling
plaster; below, a line where the earth's trembling
fractured her clavicle. Her curious

expression, calm in its calamity,
with full-fleshed lips immobile as her heart,
cracks no codes, whispers no nothings about art,
wearing the long fault of mortality.

The collection of 45 poems, employing diverse forms, "resists the encroaching dark with the imaginative sympathy, strong lyricism, and strange humor that powerful poetry can provide."

Rogoff's poems, reviews and critical prose have appeared in numerous journals. His books include How We Came to Stand on That Shore (River City Publishing, 2003), First Hand (Mica Press, 1997), and The Cutoff (Word Works, 1995).

The Long Fault is available from the Skidmore Shop, bookstores, and Amazon.com.

More at the publisher's Web site.