Elizabeth Rosner's Writings
View Elizabeth’s Books | Read Elizabeth’s other writings below.
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Article
Sep.12.2011
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
Elizabeth Rosner reviews THE WARSAW ANAGRAMS, the latest novel by Richard Zimler. Special to the San Francisco Chronicle.
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Article
Jan.09.2011
Tikkun Magazine
Viewers of Lilly Rivlin's inspiring film Grace Paley: Collected Shorts are in for much more than a portrait of the artist. Whether you are being introduced for the first time or being given the chance to become reacquainted with a much-beloved writer, this richly quilted narrative offers multiple views of a woman extraordinary and exemplary in her...
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Article
Nov.16.2010
New York Journal of Books (online)
Periodic reviews of contemporary fiction and non-fiction.
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Poem
Aug.09.2010
not yet published
Might I borrow yourdark electric bliss?Become the angel whorocked you,reach for the lover who willcomb my hair?
I surrenderto the fallwhile driving the caraway from the cliff,return the bulletsto the guns,unsay the scalding wordsof your mother.
On the edgeof the world with you,I watch the shivering grass.The cure for insomnia is poetry.The cure forlonelinessis...
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Poem
Aug.09.2010
not yet published
You learned early that life wasbooby-trapped: land mines lurkingbeneath the tablecloth,so that at breakfast, usually, someone exploded oversoured milk or a speck ofblood in the soft-boiled egg.Bitter coffee was never quitetamed by sugar, no matter howmany teaspoons-full you added;caraway seeds from thetoasted rye would stick between your teeth.
By mid-day,...
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Poem
Aug.09.2010
not yet published
The bark grows back. Recovers around the wound and reinvents beauty again. Gnarled layers of pulp and weeping resin, a twisted limb: nothing to regret. That’s whatI tell myself. I can’t really speakfor the tree, can’t know itsmemory of injury or grief.This aging trunk maps ordinary life, accumulated repair from storms and other assaults, even from fire.A year...
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Article
Jun.02.2010
New York Journal of Books, online edition
Long before she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her brilliant, Lear-inspired novel, A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley was winning admirers for her pitch-perfect stories and novellas. Collections entitled Ordinary Love & Good Will, and The Age of Grief were concise and intimate portraits of family drama, mesmerizing in their quiet intensity. Since then, Smiley...
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Poem
Apr.01.2010
Already the angel of death is passing over
your house--your door marked with the
bloody sacrifice and your windows sealed
against the hovering plagues. The closeness
of beating wings demands your attention.
You say "I need to be
transformed" and so you are--
re-sculpted in the flesh,
scars wrapping you like a
talisman against the evil eye.
This must...
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Poem
Dec.22.2009
not yet published
The moon is knocking on the high window
a dog is barking at the darkening sky
a child is shouting No to the dog and the moon
I am losing the light
the trees are losing their color on the crest
of the mountains under the knocking moon
the barking sky the darkening dog and the light saying...
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Poem
Dec.16.2009
GRAVITY (excerpt)
You said it was no way to make a living.
You loved books, but wanted me to use my hands.
I wanted to make something out of nothing,
out of air, out of words.
Certain things counted so much there:
knowing how to lay bricks, mend clothing,
how to make a pair of shoes last.
Once I got into a fight with another boy
about who was going to...
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Rosner's multilayered composition is rendered in beautiful, spare prose and will resonate long after the last page. ”
—Publisher's Weekly
About Elizabeth
Originally from upstate New York, Elizabeth Rosner is an award-winning novelist, poet and essayist now living in Berkeley, California. Her first novel, The Speed of Light, was published by Ballantine Books in 2001. The novel's central theme addresses...
Connections
Elizabeth’s Favorite Books
To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; Underworld by Don DeLillo; The Sea by John Banville; Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje; Fugitive...