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by Sarah Ruhl
An award-winning, multi-genre writer grapples with the pandemic, death of George Floyd, and other crises of our times in gnomic poems written from inside the purgatory (and sudden revelations) of quarantine.
Writing from and toward "the endless desire / to be at home in the world," Sarah Ruhl wrote Love Poems in Quarantine to mark the passage of time when all familiar landmarks disappeared. From the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, to the murder of George Floyd, to months of simultaneous quarantine and protest, this is―in free verse and form, lamentation and meditation―a book of days, a survival kit for spiritual malady. These poems find small solace in domestic absurdities. Even in global crisis, there is the laundry. The dog rolls in something putrid, the child interrupts a Zoom meeting, and dinner must get made, again and again. Using language to travel and touch when bodies could not, Ruhl has drawn with great care a portrait of a year unlike any other in history.
"Ruhl, a celebrated playwright, brings to these poems of lockdown and social unrest the same tender appreciation for resonant absurdities that she puts onstage. 'Poems are good company / when people disappoint,' she writes; 'people are good company / when poems disappoint." —New York Times
"MacArthur-honored playwright/poet Sarah Ruhl's Love Poems in Quarantine shows how small things still matter in times of pandemic and protest." —Booklist
"Anyone who went through the last two years—which is to say, everyone—will feel embraced by these pieces." —Washington Post
This information about Love Poems in Quarantine was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sarah Ruhl is a playwright, poet, and essayist. She has been a two-time Pulitzer prize finalist, a Tony award nominee, and the recipient of the MacArthur "genius" award. She teaches at the Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her children and husband.
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