All We Need of Hell by Rika Lesser

Rika Lesser's new collection can be compared to the poetry of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Delmore Schwartz, and other poets who have struggled with depressive illnesses. And yet, as Richard Howard has remarked, her work does not concern itself with "the achievement of a poetic tenor for incantatory madness for its own sake. . . . It is the plot and purpose of her sequence to take us through the harrowing experiences she creates in her lines, and out the other side."

The book begins with poems on suicide attempts, clinical depression, and mania that will attract readers with a special interest in madness. But in the course of the work the poet turns from death to a full engagement and participation in "normal life" and all that it entails.

In addition to the general poetry audience, this book will appeal to medical ethicists, psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and others needing insight into mental illness.

RIKA LESSER is a prize-winning poet and translator of Swedish and German literature. Among her books are Etruscan Things, Rilke: Between Roots, and Guide to the Underworld by Gunnar Ekelöf. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review.

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All We Need of Hell
ISBN 0-929398-85-8 cloth $15.95
ISBN 0-929398-92-0 paper $12.95s

6x9. 88 pp.
Poetry. Psychology.

Publication Date: July 1995.

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