73 pp., 6 x 9
Cloth 978-1-884836-23-7; $25.95  SALE: $10.38
Paper 978-1-884836-24-4; $14.95  SALE: $5.98

Akron Series in Poetry

- Other books by Susan Yuzna

The postmodern American reality for women consists of a society in which the confrontation with "the streets" (including drug abuse, sexual or physical abuse) can be as immediate, as influential as the previous zone of power and comfort, "home."

But motherhood and marriage continue in importance, despite the changing cultural expectations. The title, taken from Blake's "Little Girl Lost" of the "Songs of Innocence," reflects the essential and unifying element of this book: Her Slender Dress is more than a Vogue magazine cover, but may be interpreted as Blake's simple, elegant image of female corporeality. And it is from the physical body, the slender dress, that both the pain and the joy of being female emanate.

"There is no let-up in the linguistic intensity, imagistic intensity, or narrative intensity. The spirit of the word-warrior is in this writer. Its aura surrounds each one of these poems, creating a mesmerizing and disturbing book out of a deep and iron-bound necessity."
-Charles Wright

"Susan Yuzna's Her Slender Dress is a breathtaking and memorable debut. These are poems of such clarity, such harrowing self-reckoning, that the reader--like the poet herself--emerges bruised but triumphant. Beautifully and powerfully written, Her Slender Dress instantly places Susan Yuzna among the finest poets of her generation."
-David St. John

A Bush Writing Fellow in 1995, Susan Yuzna has a B.A. in English from the University of Iowa and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Montana, where she was a Richard Hugo Memorial Poetry Scholar. Yuzna teaches English at the University of North Dakota.