University of Pittsburgh Press
Whirlwind
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Whirlwind

By Sharon Dolin
In Whirlwind Sharon Dolin's trademark quick wit and candor are infused with an uncanny mix of flirt and fury. Anchored by women who ride and are ridden by the blues, these expert poems shift between ode, testimonial, and elegy. Here is the 'oh boy woe' that prompts serious play; here is the intensity a woman displays when 'her head is lifted above some suffering.' Whirlwind is a book of wonderful whimsy, grace, and bite.
Terrance Hayes
Paperback $18.00

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Whirlwind is one woman’s frank, witty, mordant, sexy look at the breakup of a marriage and its emotional aftermath. With her characteristic linguistic play and mixture of poetic registers and styles, Sharon Dolin takes her readers on an off-the-tracks emotional ride through the whirlwind that goes by the name of divorce. Hang on tight. Here poems are never merely confessional, but use formal aplomb to ride the white-heat rage, hurt, denial, reflection, regret, wistfulness, desire, and sexual passion as they go hurtling through the many stages of grief after the death of a relationship and the rebirth of a more vital self. Dolin tackles difficult subjects unflinchingly in her poems: such as betrayal and the shame of the one being betrayed, being a parent within a volatile breakup, as well as some startling poems on the reawakening of sexuality and an attention to the natural world and politics. In her poem that won a Pushcart Prize, she dons the mask of the Furies to confront her ex-husband and his lover. A journalist of her own heart, Sharon Dolin has written a brazen collection that seethes with the pressure of a story to tell: cathartic and thrilling in equal measure.

More Praise

Past praise for Sharon Dolin
"Whatever else she does with the American language, Dolin has fun: the New York City-based poet's fourth volume combines great verbal ingenuity with a vast set of subjects. . . . Attentive readers will find credible emotions, real problems of divided love and of middle-aged worry, amid the sometimes baroque surfaces of Dolin's poems. But the surfaces matter: they are the gift she brings."

Publishers Weekly on Burn and Dodge

Past praise for Sharon Dolin
"She writes at the edge of compression, with such pop to her lines that I'm reminded of Auden's definition of poetry—'memorable speech.'"

Bob Hicok on Burn and Dodge

Past praise for Sharon Dolin
"The strength of this book is that the [narrative] tapestry changes to a living, hurtful theater: the poems keep breaking their own elegant surface to reveal the shadows of loss and memory and fear. These fine poems pull the reader in—enchanting, disturbing, and consoling, all at the same time."

Eavan Boland on Realm of the Possible

Examines Dolin's divorce, the end of her marriagae, her husband's affair, her anger and self-isolation, or, in the closing sheaf of poems, her new lover and their erotic rebirh. . . . Some readers . . . may see themselves in her travails, and find both delight and relief.

Publishers Weekly
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88 Pages, 6 x 8 in.

October, 2012

isbn : 9780822962212

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about the author

Sharon Dolin

Sharon Dolin is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Manual for Living, Whirlwind, and Burn and Dodge, winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry. She is also the author of a prose memoir titled Hitchcock Blonde and two books of translation: Book of Minutes by Gemma Gorga and the prize-winning Late to the House of Words: Selected Poems by Gemma Gorga. A 2021 National Endowment for the Arts [SA1] Fellowship recipient, Fulbright Scholar, Pushcart Prize winner, and recipient of a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, she lives in New York City, where she teaches poetry workshops and is associate editor of Barrow Street Press.

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Sharon Dolin