Orpheus in the Park

Rose Solari’s second full-length collection of poems is made up of two different yet intertwining strands. In one, Solari explores a variety of myths, climbing beneath the skin of classical heroes and villains to offer contemporary perspectives on these characters and their tales. The other strand consists of poems of celebration and farewell, written for the author’s late parents, as well as in honor of relationships, illusions, and old selves that have passed on. Woven together, the two strands illuminate each other, dissolving boundaries between the past and the present, the extraordinary and the ordinary, the mythical and the everyday.

On Orpheus in the Park

I admire Rose Solari’s poems for their steadiness in the presence of emotional challenge. She writes about the real things that happen to us, transforming them, by means of a secure craft and loving attention to detail, into works of art that happen to us in more durable ways. — Henry Taylor, artist

Orpheus in the Park comes dangerously close to being the best collection I have read over the past two years. This is a brilliant collection. I know I will continue to dip in and out of it as it brings back memories of hot summers lost in a world of Mount Olympus, of the battle between the gods and the mortals, and reminds me of the challenges and weaknesses of humanity itself. —Fiona Doney Simmonds, New Hope International Review

*Orpheus in the Park was originally published by The Bunny & the Crocodile Press, but is now distributed through ASP.