Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog

Alicia Suskin Ostriker is a major American poet and critic. She is the author of numerous poetry collections, including, most recently, The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog; The Book of Life: Selected Jewish Poems, 1979–2011; and The Book of Seventy, winner of the National Jewish Book Award. She has received the Paterson Poetry Prize, the San Francisco State Poetry Center Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, and has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award, among other honors. Ostriker teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Drew University and is currently a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

In her new collection, 'The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog,' Ostriker brings together a trio of voices-each a living thing, each mortal and yet calling out its truths in a clear tenor. These three voices, extraordinary in their ordinariness, build conversations that whirl around each topic. They catch angles of consideration that illuminate issues of the body, mind, relationships, and the earth itself. The woman, the tulip, and the dog have their say in turn, agree and disagree where they ought, and leave the reader in a deep, smiling contemplation. . . When Ostriker speaks this way through these dynamic, lovable beings, I am reminded of the burdens and aches of life as well as its joys and triumphs.