They Are Sleeping

JOANNA KLINK is the author of four books of poetry. She has received awards and fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Trust of Amy Lowell, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She is teaching at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas.

In Joanna Klink’s poems the limits of consciousness are constantly tried by the seductive enchantments of lyricism; clarity and mystery are not only brought close to each other, often they seem indistinguishable. Everywhere, a forceful, scrupulous intelligence is active—a luminous diction, a range of cadences. Everywhere, the burden of feeling is borne with ease.