Winner of the 2014 Four Lakes Poetry Prize What if ruin is a good thing? What if each day is built on the ruin of the one before? What if all our attempts to avoid ruin only make us bitter or closed off from what’s around us? What if only by exploring our ruins do we become human? The poems in Otherwise Unseeable examine such questions. It is a poetry full of music and surprise, in voices that are personal, invented, and historical, sometimes belonging to the poet and sometimes to others. Betsy Sholl probes what there is still to learn from the devastations of the twentieth century, and she explores the roots of human envy, greed, and generosity in lively, unexpected ways, enacting the kinds of arguments we have with ourselves: between control and relinquishment, grief and ecstasy, regret and acceptance, faith and skepticism. The end result is a book of verbal wrestling, a girl-Jacob mixing it up with one kind of angel or another, limping for sure, but still blessed. Winner, Maine Literary Award, Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance

Otherwise Unseeable (Wisconsin Poetry Series)

Literature & Fiction

Sholl, Betsy

Poetry

University of Wisconsin Press

The bluesy, rich, and vital poems in House of Sparrows look for grace and beauty not outside of the suffering world but within it. Betsy Sholl explores the shifting ironies and contradictions in the stories we tell—how the apple is both medicinal and poison, and how the poor are spiritually rich. Her language mines the landscapes of Appalachia, New England, and the works of Dante and St. Francis, seeking music and moral clarity in the breakages and noisy contradictions of life. By turns meditative and vivid, these poems suggest that all journeys are in part journeys of the spirit.

House of Sparrows: New and Selected Poems (Wisconsin Poetry Series)

Blue sky, yellow flowers, cool jazz, and Renaissance poetry all inhabit Betsy Sholl's latest collection of poetry. Grounded in the everyday but never mundane, these poems remind readers of the wonders that surround us. From a child's drawing tattooed onto the arm of a mechanic to bats under the Congress Avenue bridge in Austin, Sholl points to the richness of life. As the volume carefully and slowly immerses us in the poet's world, we gradually begin to understand that this is our journey of exploration as much as hers. Where does one find joy in the face of loss? Why does music exist in a world of grief? How long does it take love to overwhelm pain? Through these powerful poems we learn to see past the unreliability of memory and into the depth of the present. The child makes you a blue inch at the top of the page, and it's still hard for grown-ups to think you come all the way down to the space between grass blades-Excerpt from "Dear Sky"

As If a Song Could Save You (Wisconsin Poetry Series)

Winner of the 1991 Associated Writing Programs' Award Series in Poetry

The Red Line (Pitt Poetry Series)

University of Pittsburgh Press

Antonio Machado used to say the capacity for wonder is the source of true poetry, and this is the magical ingredient I find in Betsy Sholl All, or almost all, of Sholl’s poems are coming from a center whose discipline of attention (in a spiritual sense) and discipline of language coincide. This means she is working where the richest ore lies.”Luis Ellicott Yglesias, New Boston ReviewThe collection is distinctly American, the language, the voice, the way she sets her private dreams and memories against a flat indifferent landscape The poems sing a familiar song, but the particulars are her own, without self-pity or excessive egoism.”Fanny Howe

Changing Faces

Alice James Books

"A remarkable celebration of life as it is lived This is an intelligent, mature, unique voice in American poetry, one that speaks directly and piercingly to important universals.” —Choice

Appalachian Winter

Rooms Overhead

Coastal Bop Paperback – December, 2001 by Betsy Sholl

Coastal Bop

Oyster River Pr

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sholl, Betsy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Sholl, Betsy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sholl, Betsy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Otherwise Unseeable (Wisconsin Poetry Series)

House of Sparrows: New and Selected Poems (Wisconsin Poetry Series)

As If a Song Could Save You (Wisconsin Poetry Series)

The Red Line (Pitt Poetry Series)

The Red Line (Pitt Poetry Series)

Changing Faces

Appalachian Winter

Rooms Overhead

Rooms Overhead

Coastal Bop