Nude in Winter
by Francine Sterle
$19.95
Protean, visceral, visionary: Francine Sterle is “the poet [who] aims her words at what’s unworded.” Entering work after work of art, she releases “the pressure of concealment” in what is mute to reveal the “deforming forces,” “the buried grains of regret,” “the geology of grief.” Her loving eye embeds itself in the matter it illuminates, unafraid of what it sees, and “radiance/ breaks through/ the darkened heart.” —Eleanor Wilner
Format: paperback
“The poetry of Francine Sterle is as memorable as it is unique, as superbly crafted as it is lyrical. Nude In Winter will prove to be a welcome introduction to one of the most distinctive voices in American poetry today. “The Uncertainty of the Poet: Giogrio de Chirico”: Near the dark arches of the arcade,/a headless, plaster torso of a woman./By her dimpled hip, two dozen/green and yellow bruised bananas.//Off in the distance,/a train with its ample banner of steam/speeds left into oblivion. Menacing,/monumental shadows master what we see./Wait: the wish of reason is revered./The poet aims her words at what’s unworded,/startled by the horizon’s vaporous wall.” – From Midwest Book review, reviewed by Margaret Lane
Protean, visceral, visionary: Francine Sterle is “the poet [who] aims her words at what’s unworded.” Entering work after work of art, she releases “the pressure of concealment” in what is mute to reveal the “deforming forces,” “the buried grains of regret,” “the geology of grief.” Her loving eye embeds itself in the matter it illuminates, unafraid of what it sees, and “radiance/ breaks through/ the darkened heart.”—Eleanor Wilner
“The body is entitled to some lyricism,” Francine Sterle insists in a series of ekphrastic poems that deepen into “sumptuous facades” so that they might attempt “more than learning to see.” If “Ingres believed the only way to possess a woman / was to paint her,” Sterle believes that passionate lyric engagement might be a means of possessing these paintings. “Touched by the erotic,” her poems gather into a gallery unlike any other, a museum of Sterle’s own making in which “The poet aims her words at what’s unworded” to cast light upon the divine, sometimes lascivious, and always “exquisite curves” of creation.”—Michael Waters
“Francine Sterle’s lucid and prismatic book is an art gallery made of words. Nude in Winter exemplifies the way poetry can restore the static image to the realm of time, where it can move and breathe. Sterle’s poems also lead us from what we can see to what cannot be seen, from the tangible world to the inner life. Attuned to both the erotic and the spiritual, this is a beautiful book.”—Reginald Gibbons
Book Trailer Now Available to View!
Take a look at the new, provocative video trailer for Nude in Winter
Nude in Winter is the second book of poetry from the award-winning Minnesota poet Francine Sterle, whose first, Every Bird is One Bird, was the Tupelo Press Editor’s Prize Award winner in 2001.
The new book is composed of “ekphrastic” poems or poems about art. Reginald Gibbons, a much lauded writer, Guggenheim award-winner and professor of English at Northwestern University writes, “Francine Sterle’s lucid and prismatic book is an art gallery made of words… Attuned to both the erotic and spiritual, this is a beautiful book.”
Already nominated for a prestigious Pushcart Prize, these poems pick up after the artist’s brush is put down. Sterle seduces us into the canvas with urgent, provocative language. She delves into a diversity of artists and images-from Monet and Degas to Helen Frankenthaler and the contemporary photographer whose startling image is on the book’s cover, Craig Blakelock. Sterle’s poems engage the powerful dynamic between desire and disturbance, so common and yet so mysterious in the creative process. Eminent poet Jane Hirshfield says that what distinguishes Nude in Winter “is its fierce muscularity, the active originality of these descriptions.” Eleanor Wilner extends that praise, calling Sterle “protean, visceral and visionary.”
“I am deeply moved by these poems,” said Jeffrey Levine, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Tupelo Press. “Francine Sterle’s gaze is uncompromising as she takes us on a startling journey into the realm of the tortured and the adored, from the darkest corners of human experience to the light of understanding and renewal.”
Tupelo Press offers this free, downloadable Nude in Winter Reader’s Companion in PDF format. Click to download. (216 K)
A native of Minnesota, Francine Sterle was educated at Oxford University, Oxford, England, and Bemidji State University, Bemidji, Minnesota, where she earned both B.S. and M.A. degrees in English as well as at Warren Wilson College, Asheville, North Carolina, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry. She has studied writing in a variety of settings, including Oxford University, the Spoleto Writers’ Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Awards include four Pushcart Prize nominations, a Loft-McKnight Foundation Award, a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, a Lake Superior Contemporary Writers Award, residencies at the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, the Leighton Studios at the Banff Centre for the Arts and the Blacklock Nature Sanctuary, as well as both a Fellowship Grant and a Career Opportunity Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board.
Her poems have been published widely in such literary journals as The North American Review, Nimrod, CutBank, Great River Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Atlanta Review and have been anthologized in To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-territorial Days to the Present, 33 Minnesota Poets and The Cancer Poetry Project. Her works include a chapbook, The White Bridge (Poetry Harbor, 1999), and a full-length collection, Every Bird is One Bird, which won the 2001 Editor’s Prize from Tupelo Press and was a finalist for a Northeast Minnesota Book Award. Presently, she is on the Board of Directors for the Laurentian Cultural and Arts Alliance, Virginia, MN, as well as the Advisory Board for Lake Superior Writers, Duluth, MN. Ms. Sterle works as a private poetry mentor and live on the West Two River with her husband Jonathan Speare, a clinical psychologist, two Maine Coon cats and an exuberant Rhodesian Ridgeback.
Additional information
| Dimensions | 6 × .5 × 9 in |
|---|
1947-R No. 2
(Clyfford Still)
in hell’s
irruptive blaze
& quivering heat
& molten scarring
a field of ox blood-
colored fire
ignites the mind’s
flammable surface &
as it rips & tears
as ragged flashes of black
rise like the devil’s
tempting tongue
there are trapped
in this bottomless world
in the parched
center of this stifling life
resilient splashes of white
& so a little radiance
breaks through
the darkened heart
how exhilarating
its burst
into consciousness
& yet how far away
from the burning soul
its light
Download the free reader’s companion here.
