Refuge

Belle Waring was born in Warrenton, Virginia, in 1951. She holds degrees in nursing and English, and in 1988 she received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Vermont College. She is now on the Field Faculty of the Vermont College M.F.A. program and also wor

Waring's poems forcibly avoid the workshop warp. From the opening, her language lashes. . . . Anyone would be convinced of both her originality and her toughness. . . . Waring uses tactics that women singers have known about for a long time: the balm of the work song and the empowering sounds a brassy belter makes as she sings of a tough life that earns her a living.