In The Night of the Lunar Eclipse, her second collection, Szumowski explores the roots of our culture while remaining true to her own. Time collapses in this collection, melding the images of our past: arch angels and ancient Rome with a saloon somewhere in east-nowhere Frackville, creating a unique texture to her work that is light, loving, and just this side of ecstatic.

Szumowski's work unravels the tenderness from each subject with gentle and eager wordplay that scintillates the heart as it pierces with sublime purity. In her poems, the sensitive, aching of the human heart reminds us that the real world is still in motion — its inhabitants clinging to something beautiful — even after we have reached the final page.

"I value this book for its ecstasies, its griefs, and the intensity and strength of its utterance."

        — Elinor Wilner

"In The Night of the Lunar Eclipse Margaret Szumowski dances a delicious and wild step where desires are embodied in almost everything touched and seen. In her world, the ordinary quivers in its skin 'with the light from our rough bodies,' and 'tedious houses and one-way streets" begin to mambo, mambo.' Even within the darkness cast by many losses, some other light begins to burn. These poems are convincingly ecstatic. The beloved is everywhere, and each particular place, vividly evoked, perches on the rim of paradise."

        — Rebecca Seiferle

Margaret Szumowski's first volume of poetry with Tupelo Press was I Want This World.