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Elizabeth KIRSCHNER
Elizabeth
Kirschner has published three collections of poem, "Twenty Colors,"
"Postal Routes," and "Slow Risen Among the Smoke Trees" all with Carnegie
Mellon University Press. Her chapbook, "The Red Dragon" has just been
released by "Permafrost." Her poems have appeared widely in numerous
national and international journals and she teaches at Boston College.
She has set
her own poetry to Robert Schumann's "Dichterliebe", which will have
its world premiere on September 20th in Vienna. The soprano, Linda
Balliro, will perform the piece and its American premiere will occur
on October 14th at St. Paul's Church in Brookline, MA. Soprano Jean
Danton will sing it accompanied by pianist Thomas Strumpf. It is gender-neutral
and written with fresh, evocative and haunting language. In addition,
Elizabeth Kirschner has collaborated with the composer Thomas Oboe
Lee, with
Paul Wehage for a cycle of "American Songs" and is currenty
writing a libretto based on Milton's "Samson Agonistes" in collaboration
with Carson
P. Cooman.
Elizabeth Kirschner's Twenty Colors is a first book quite remarkable
among first books for its consistency and maturity of voice. The beautiful
contradictions in these poems are conveyed with much poise, confidence,
and courage as the poet maintains a stance that is at once tough and
tender, mediating between a gentle embracing of disappointment and
a mistrust toward any promise of paradise.
--Nance Van Winckel, Shenandoah
"Taken all together, the suite of poems in "Slow
Risen Among the Smoke Trees" comprises a sort of lyric novel, tracing
the evolution of a character and those she loves across the deepening
changes wrought by time. Elizabeth Kirschner's gorgeous ear is tuned
to a language of the inner life which is unmistakably her own; she
listens accutely to the unfurlings, fears and flowerings of the spirit."
Mark Doty
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